/lit/ - Literature

>>6729898
Godel, Escher, Bach

The Diamond Sutra.

>>6729909
Thanks

>>6729912
What the hell is that?

sam harris is an idiot

the only worthwhile philosophy is interchangeable with religion aka MORAL PHILOSOPHY aka WHAT SHOULD I DO

>>6729898
Not Sam "I worship science as a cargo cult" Harris. As always, pic related

>>6729918
As per Sam Harris, religion can't tell you that, only science can.

From The Moral Landscape

"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."

>>6729927
has he responded to Wittgenstein? or pretty much any philosopher in the past 100 years?

Im guessing hes a utilitarian, the worst of all the philosophies

>>6729922
Nice dubs, but does anyone actually have a good argument against Sam Harris, or is disliking him simply a meme?

>>6729969
Go fuck yourself, that's my argument

>>6729969
I haven't read or seen anything from the guy, but this quote >>6729898 in OP's image makes me mad.

For some reason it's implying religion is attempting to study something, and under this premise he's comparing it to art, science and philosophy. That's asinine and illogical. Religion is simply something that has driven most socio-political structure for all of known history and likely prehistory.

From what I can infer in that image, he looks to me to be someone pandering to people who are either secular and live around a lot of religious people and are angry at the bullshit, or people who are ex-religious and are hurt and like to hear it get bashed. Nothing more than the Bill O'Reilly of atheism.

>>6729909
lolno. GEB is new age bullshit for STEMs.

>>6729898
Anyone that makes quotes like these can be immediately disregarded as unintelligent and unaware of the big picture.

>>6730006
Maybe by "religion" he means "theology"?

>>6730022
>Anyone that makes quotes like these can be immediately disregarded as unintelligent and unaware of the big picture.

Anyone that makes quotes like these can be immediately disregarded as unintelligent and unaware of the big picture.

>>6730018
nice alternative suggestion.

oh wait, there isn't one. Shitposting faggot.

GEB is a little bit BS and is definitely aimed at STEMs, but being aimed at STEMs should reinforce the idea that it's a book that might assist in critical thinking. Goose.

>>6729969
lel this board is full of Christian Marxists, don't take them seriously. Sam Harris is based.

>>6730024
well, given that those are two entirely separate concepts, I doubt that that's what he met.

Theology is attempting to study reality to an extent. Religion is just a product of society, it isn't trying to study anything.

>>6730043
Kek, it's time for them to pick up a book

>>6729898
Gilbert Ryle- The Concept of Mind

>>6729969
The answer is that Harris seems to consider himself a renaissance man. An intellectual with the flexibility to opine on topics as broad as neuroscience, philosophy, religion, foreign policy, geopolitics, defence, terrorism, you name it. Perhaps more importantly, he writes on these topics in a way which suggests he thinks he's revolutionising the field.
The problem is that on all of those subjects besides neuroscience he's a complete dilettante. He seems to have a complete aversion to reading and engaging with people who have considered these subjects at length for decades. With philosophy his refusal to engage with the literature was because his readers would find it "boring". He then comes out with an unreflective version of hedonistic utilitarianism, and parades it around like its a revolutionary concept.

>>6729969
I'm on /lit/ pretty regularly and I seem to agree with Harris on most subjects. I don't usually bother defending or praising him, though, because, as someone once said, you can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Their dislike for Harris is invariably irrational.

>>6730332
there are good arguments against him posted in this thread tho

>Sam Harris

>>6730332
He's the Bill O'Reilly of atheism.

He just says what angry atheists want to hear to gain popularity, regardless of the validity.

>>6729927
Science caused climate change, though.

>>6730380
You mean capitalism.

>>6730382
You mean a growing population. That resulted in demand outstripping potential replacement rates for English timber. Necessitating a shift to coal to heat peoples houses. Spurring the industrial revolution.

>>6729969
I tend to agree with him politically, but his philosophical outlook is pleb tier, you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. On a more general note, the 'new atheist' critique of bullshit metaphysics is full of bullshit metaphysics.

>>6730382
>>6730388
Both of which are consequences of a scientific, technocratic mindset.

Science caused climate change.

>>6730380

Science is the research of observable phenomena. Industrialization caused climate change.

>>6730380
A religious like deification of the free market has caused a refusal to acknowledge what is going o

>>6730397

The only reason we have concrete data that climate change is occurring at all is because of science. Your argument sucks.

>>6730397
large-scale farming along with aggressive religious belief that led to cultural expasion caused climate change, actually. That's the initial domino in massive population growth.

Call xenophobic religion and farmers making larger fields science if you feel like it. But the scientific method was not involved.

>>6730404
>>6730407
The developments that led to this unchecked population growth are directly tied to Cartesian, Baconian, Spinozan desire to be the masters of nature. They are born of a desire to control and dominate, which is at the core of all the natural sciences.

Science caused climate change.

>>6730415
My god, do you actually believe people wanted to 'control nature' because they just loved Descartes so much, or because there were tangible benefits to it? Science is not to blame for people wanting more food and costumer goods, you papist goon.

>>6730415
Eh? Are you faulting advances like stuff that decreases infant mortality? What do you mean "unchecked"? Technology doesn't make people have unprotected sex more, in fact it gave us more efficient birth control and abortion

>>6730415
wait, what?

I'm talking about straight up Babylonian shit here, bro. I'm talking about civilizations growing massive in ancient history through large-scale farming practices and religious practices that caused the people who controlled these large-scale farming practices(which gave them surpluses in food, which allowed for people to work in other trades including superior warriors and technology, none of which using the scientific method as this concept did not exist at the time) to expand through aggressive religious conversion or war, expanding their large-scale farming practices with it, which allowed for larger populations than hunter/gatherers, herders and small-time gardeners. This is the root of population growth and modern society, and it began thousands of years before science had even begun to develop properly. There was no science before, simply "trial/error".

>>6730332
>>6730193
Check out the post above yours, brah

>>6730415
The desire that ignites two different activites doesn't show that one activity started the other.

You've fished into one's restaurant's toilet bowl for feces, secreted it away and flushed it away at another restaurant.

Science alone can never justify its own activity the same way a restaurant cannot produce waste without customers, and /lit/ can't shitpost without anons like you.

>>6729898
https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1045205.jpg

>>6730457

the expression of the desire to manipulate and control nature as expressed through modern science led to things like industrial pollution from factories and transportation for the purposes of trade. while it may seem science has unlocked the answers to human progress and flourishing all human achievement in this regard is built upon a house of cards that can come tumbling down at any point from the ecological crisis. these scientists trying to instrumentally control nature are like children pressing buttons in a factory with no real conception of the long-term implications of their actions. humanity would be better off had this rationalistic-industrial-scientific worldview never come into prominence

>>6730549
these things wouldn't be a problem if there were 6.5 billion less people. Overpopulation is the core problem.


A third of greenhouse gasses are emitted just because we are trying to feed our swollen population. The rest are all tied directly to how large our population is in different ways.

>>6730580
industrial revolution is the root cause of overpopulation, once again science is at the bottom of it

>>6730599
That's simply false that it's the root cause. It definitely springboarded it, but the population was already steadily climbing to 1 billion and beyond well before it, which means the initial cause lies elsewhere.

>>6730363
Exactly.

>>6730006

>Religion is simply something that has driven most socio-political structure for all of known history and likely prehistory.
>and likely prehistory
>implying religion as we know it today existed before writing was invented

>>6730898
>implying animistic religion isn't religion
srsly m8

>>6730040
>but being aimed at STEMs should reinforce the idea that it's a book that might assist in critical thinking
Not many STEMfags I know are critical

>>6730399
You're shifting the meaning and the responsabilites of Science as you go. Now you're making a distinction between industrialization and science, things that are deeply connected.

You can reduce science to the scietific method if you want to absolve it for all influence it caused on modern life, but then stop claiming that it had any important role in human development in the last 200 years. Attribute everything to religion and other social dynamics then. It will be, at least, consistent.

You just can't say good things happened because science, and bad thing because religion. The roots of all evil and good that happened in our society are the same, namely, the shift to anthropocentric scientific technocratic mindset that happened in the enlightenment.

>>6730963
Probably because they are largly apolitical, they have not honed their skills for that area. If you talk to them about their own fields it changes quite a bit.
>>6730898
There are tribes who still live largely isolated from the outside world, their religions and myths have large overlaps with our own desert mythos.

>>6731033
>The roots of all evil and good that happened in our society are the same, namely, the shift to anthropocentric scientific technocratic mindset that happened in the enlightenment.

But the roots of 'good and evil' post-enlightenment shifted into a semantic structure.

>>6731307
>desert mythos
Your use of this phrase makes you look like an idiot

> science as study of reality

Science does not STUDY reality. It attempts to model reality. This is so fucking basic. True explanative power can only come from metaphysics.

>>6731343
word

>>6730382
>capitalism
You fucking idiot, have you ever heard of "the tragedy of the commons"? Most 'climate'-problems or associated can be solved by just respecting this (overfishing, etc.) Literally the only problem is the common airspace. And you can probably claim ownership of that too, in some way, within an area.