/lit/ - Literature

He doesn't have any charms, he may be the most boring man on the planet

>>6172834
> Ben Stiller
>>>/tv/

MOTION TO ABOLISH SAM HARRIS THREADS ON /lit/ FOREVER

ALL IN FAVOR SAY AYE

ALL OPPOSED SAY NAY

philosophy you don't agree with != not a philosopher

>>6172843
AYE!

>>6172845
BA in philosophy from a shitty college hardly makes you a philosopher.

Try again.

why can't people be succinct?

5 minutes in and she hasn't said anything.

>>6172843
NAY! Decades from now -- perhaps even centuries from now -- people will still be talking about Sam Harris, and think all of those who disagreed with him on free will and religion primitive.

>>6172863
>puts Harris' name in scare quotes
>she hasn't said anything
Do you only understand literal language? Her talk is not about Harris at all, but her remark was enough for it to reflect what actual thinkers think of him and his work.

>>6172849
Stanford isn't exactly shitty.

>>6172875
BA alone is shit achievement no matter what the university.

This lady is like a SNL character.

>>6172843
i think if we really looked at our brain chemistry we would find nothing about morality, but certainly we would find that we all found sam harris a cunt who could be bashed about the head with a large rock with not much indignation to be felt by any of us.

>>6172875
No, I guess it isn't. I don't have real critiques.

>>6172877
Anon, your ability to make things about degrees is an achievement. But I still wouldn't put it on your resume.

>>6172834
seeing a guy who majored in philosophy yet is actually successful must be infuriating to you guys


i'd be mad as fuck, too, if i wasted time on a useless degree

>>6172870
This. People need to read Harris before paying so much attention to all of his ultra PC critics.

>>6172889
Maybe you should read his actual critics

>>6172888
>i'd be mad as fuck, too, if i wasted time on a useless degree


yea, yea whatever.

finna throw up bout dis punctuation tho

>>6172871
Does this one woman represent all """""""""********HUGE QUOTATION MARKS TO ILLUSTRATE MY POINT ********""""""""" actual thinkers """""""""******** HUGE QUOTATION MARKS TO ILLUSTRATE MY POINT ********"""""""""?

>>6172935
Yes, she does. Now go back to reading those low-brow can't-think-for-myself polemic pieces of Harris.

>>6172957
I haven't read Harris since I was about 16.

I just happen to agree with him on free will, and that lady is just another lady with a different opinion.

It also looks like she's giving a lecture to random fishermen on some cabin cruiser.

>tell people to start with the greeks
>they don't even have a BA

>>6172972
>that lady
Patricia Churchland
>It also looks like she's giving a lecture to random fishermen on some cabin cruiser.
That "cabin cruiser" encapsulates Paul Churchland, Daniel Dennett, David Chalmers, Jesse Prinz, Andy Clark, and a few neuroscientists.

But coming from someone who reads or who has read Harris, I am not at all surprised you know none of the names above.

>>6172994
That anon almost definitely knows about Dennett

>doesn't realize that most neuroscientists and philosophers are full of personal interests and resentment against more popular choices

>doesn't realize that this is a gateway to have different opinions about everything the popular ones does

>doesn't realize that it becomes an unsincere position based on individual dilemmas rather than a scientific research on the subject

>doesn't realize that his life is a joke based on pride and seek of power through unconventional ways (such as knowledge), and that's why he gets so pissed off about meaningless bullshit

>mfw he will negate all of this and continue posting bullshit that no one cares about

>>6173013
>he will negate all of this and continue posting bullshit that no one cares about
What you posted is itself a highly concentrated bullshit. It negates itself.

>>6173026

>uses "no u"

>>6173029
You're the one who needs to provide evidence for your claims, but oh, you can't, because you're trying to psychoanalyze people on the internet, whom you have no access to

>>6172902

>his actual critics

Who are his "actual critics"? Who have made the best criticisms of his ideas?

>>6172840
>Treatise of kekology, Vol II

>taking Patricia Chruchland seriously
No, OP. I won't do that. (Not that I want to support Harris either).

>>6173060
That debate with a couple scientists and some philosophers on the topic of morality had him BTFO by literally everyone in the room.

>>6173258

If anyone knows what debate this fellow is talking about do tell

>>6173264
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtH3Q54T-M8

>>6172843
AYE

>>6173060
People in the 50s who debunked his crap before he was even born.

>>6173546
Exactly what?

>>6173546

Examples?

>>6172843
Nay!

Are we even sure that Harris is a human?
He might be a werewolf you know.

>>6172843

AYE

Daily reminder that man can DO what he wills, but he cannot CHOOSE what he wills.

>>6173691

Why is this retarded comic strip pretending like Harris doesn't address this objection? He addresses it constantly.

>>6172843
ayy Lmao

>>6172840

>>6172834
>Since we can all agree that he is not a philosopher
He absolutely is though.

>>6173719
He addresses his misunderstanding of it

Seriously though what is his counterargument?

Sam Harris is Rakitin irl

>>6173885

I think his counterargument is that the discussion of what ought to be only makes sense in the context of the flourishing of conscious beings.

>>6172843
AYE (LMAO)

Seriously, what has Harris contributed to neuroscience? Has he written papers and books on it?

>>6172843
AYYYYE

>>6174283

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18072236
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0007272

Yeah he's done papers I don't know how many though. Those two I found from his wikipedia article.

>>6174343
>The PLOS ONE article
>first comment
>Minimal technical standards unmet
>The article purports to discuss "religious" belief, yet the subjects studied were all Christian. Christians are a minority of those holding religious beliefs.

http://www.plosone.org/annotation/listThread.action?root=2333

aylmao

I have published in PLOS ONE as second author and sometimes their "take everything that comes along" approach lets in terrible papers, why else would I be there

>>6174351

That's quite a superficial quibble that doesn't really undermine the paper as a whole

They probably should have talked of "Christian belief" instead of "religious belief", but this in no way compromises the data they gathered in regards to Christian thinking and nonreligious thinking

>>6174406
I wouldn't say that it's a superficial quibble, the paper clearly interprets their results as "religious brains" vs. "non-religious brains" when their data is only based on one of the smaller religions, i.e., it clearly overstates its importance/applicability

>>6174436

Only the interpretation of the results is compromised, not the experiment itself or the value of the data they gathered.

If we're questioning Sam Harris' competence as a neuroscientist I'd expect to see how his experiments are poorly designed on a technical level.

And in any case Christianity is the largest religion in the world so it's not even that big of an overstatement.

>>6172843
AYYYYYYEEE

>>6173608

>>6173901
Hahaha, good one, Anon. Is he that fucking annoying?

>>6172834
No, it doesn't matter whether he's right, the position he advocates is a good locus for discussion. Though I agree that "discussion" is usually less that serious an often is shitposting

>>6173271

>Can science tell us right from wrong.

How is this even a debate, of course it can't. Even children realize this.

>>6173691
That series is gold.

>My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics

>Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see that there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.

>Despite our perennial bad behavior, our moral progress seems to me unmistakable.

Based Sam Harris

>>6175880

How about you listen to the arguments and debunk them instead of using your time to make facile shitposts about how you're so above the whole discussion.

>>6177027
>based
>the most cliched scientism that leads to nothing

>>6177040
>debunk them
You don't need to debunk an argument that is fallacious and wrong from the get go.

>>6177046

How is it "fallacious from the get go"?

>>6177053
Because science deals only in what is, not what ought. Even after a hypothetical perfect mapping of the brain and complete answers on how to increase happiness and "flourishing" for all, you still haven't even begun to answer the question of why we should do anything and why not blow up the planet instead of living in Harris' utopia. No existential statement/scientific fact leads to any kind of morality.

>>6177066

How does talking about what ought to be makes sense in any other context than the experiences of conscious beings? In a barren universe there would be no concept of "ought" at all, it only comes into existence from the thoughts of conscious beings and it is tethered to their experiences.

>>6177072
>How does talking about what ought to be makes sense
It doesn't make sense in any context - what exists are animals with relatively high cognitive functions and (most of the time) emotional investments towards notions of good and evil which have their basis mostly on evolutionary biology that's "aimed" towards survival and reproduction. Exceptions like philosophical pessimism etc exist but they aren't very adaptive in a species dominated by pollyanna. Moral realism is nothing but the supposedly rigid rationalization of feelings.

>>6177091

If it doesn't make sense in ANY context how can we ever fruitfully discuss ethics?

>>6177117
We can't, yet people do it anyway. Funny, innit?

>>6177134

This just reaffirms my belief that Harris' approach is the most reasonable. Even if there is the axiom "flourishing of conscious beings is good" that you have to accept at least we're getting somewhere then.

>>6177143
We're really not.

>>6177151

Then what have the changes in the moral fabric of society in the past centuries been about? Was ending slavery and hunting witches not decisions that put us more in the direction of the flourishing of conscious beings?

>>6177160
Your whole question is flawed, you're implying moral directions and utilitarian calculus and whatnot. Humans do what they do, that's it. Abolishing slavery was more of a result of changes in the economy and slave owners and The Man not wanting to risk a war after increasing resistance by the slaves than anything related to morality.

>>6177174

>you're implying moral directions and utilitarian calculus and whatnot.

Well yes because of the axiom of the flourishing of conscious beings that I mentioned earlier, if that's the starting point then there are directions.

>Humans do what they do, that's it. Abolishing slavery was more of a result of changes in the economy and slave owners and The Man not wanting to risk a war after increasing resistance by the slaves than anything related to morality.

That might very well be so (although surely slavery was abolished in different places for different reasons) but whatever the reasons the moral direction remains unchanged (once again starting from the axiom I mentioned).