/lit/ - Literature

I actually think Harris is an intelligent guy with a good capability of self-reflection.
But I don't understand why he cares for the mission her cares for, or the way he fights the topic.

Anyone shame my view?

Pointless debate.

Morality is inherently subjective.

>>6904097
Atheist fedora detected

>>6904106

I can see that your capacity for discussion is highly developed.

Is this the guy who tried to own Chomsky and got his ass handed like the 36 chambers of shaolin, and still had the mail exchange on his site thinking that it wasn't embarrassing?

>inb4 "you can't win debates"

>>6904106
Being anything but an atheist automatically makes you an idiot.

fact

>>6904144

Most of the exchange was useless because Harris misinterpreted what Chomsky had meant and they were just talking beside each other. Chomsky's pissy mood and his reluctance to set the record straight right off the bat didn't help it either. I don't see how it was that embarrassing for Harris.

I would understand Chomsky's tone if he thought Harris had intentionally misrepresented what he said in order to win an argument but that's not what was going on. He was just cunty for no good reason.

non-foundationalist ethics is not only impossible, but makes no sense

Your mom lost her debate with my dick

[pssh nothing personell kidding intensifies]

>>6904106
>>6904158

Harris clearly doesn't think very hard about the arguments he makes. He spent most of the debate making pleas to emotion and trying to be funny. I'm seriously disappointed in him.

Craig was beautifully direct and thorough in his arguments- his only failing is his belief in God. His second contention almost perfectly describes my views on morality.

>>6904291

>making pleas to emotion

No he doesn't. Sometimes he makes what you could call pleas to common sense.

>>6904036
>I actually think Harris is an intelligent guy
>Anyone shame my view?
probably some people on reddit.

>>6904310
common sense is for faggots

>>6904318

You have an incredibly optimistic view of human beings if you take the 7+ billion apes living on this planet, including all the Africans and low tier Asians and you look at this mass of people and still don't put people like Sam Harris in the "intelligent" part of the mass. I wonder what people you think actually do belong to that mass. It must be a tiny amount of people, which doesn't make sense because then you should be using another word like genius.

>>6904343
4/10 here's your reply.

I was worried for a second there people on /lit/ actually thought Harris was intelligent.

>>6904350

Stop using words wrong. There is no way you can actually argue that Sam Harris would not be considered "intelligent" if you looked at the spectrum of human beings on this planet. You just say things without really thinking about what you're saying you mongoloid.

>>6904350
>confusing subjective opinions with objective faculties
Bruh.

my god they're both the worst

Good lord, Harris is insufferable.

He has two arguments and a bag of bad jokes, and just keeps cycling through those. He's not doing a very good job of supporting his own views, so he retreads the same attacks on the Christian god that much more intelligent people have made with far greater clarity, in a context where they were actually warranted.

>>6904024
>sam harris
>winning anything except an award for "World's biggest faggot"
pick 1

>>6904376
No he's a moron. He's intelligent compared to the retards who think he's intelligent, like yourself but overall he's dumb as shit.

Shit "scientist"
Shit "philosopher"
Shit public speaker

If you go through Stanford and still can't formulate a proper argument, then you are a brain dead moron. He's even dumber than the hitchens brothers.

go back to reddit.

>>6904425
sure I'm gonna take the word of some nobody NEET over a STANFORD NEUROSCIENTIST

L M A O
M
A
O

>>6904425

You do realize that "brain dead morons" don't even have a chance of getting into Stanford in the first place.

Stop using words wrong please.

>>6904144
He has dealt with the topic in one of his podcasts. Go and check it out.

>>6904440
>>6904442
>he went to da fancy school dat means he must be smart
I'll admit compared to you he is very intelligent.

>>6904425
I feel like you may or may not be a Zizek fanboy (read: fucboi).

>>6904024
Sam Harris looks more like Ben stiller with every meme

>>6904505
at least Zizek has the decency to be unfalsifiable. Harris has been wrong on everything and gets BTFO routinely.

>>6904499

Where do you think Sam Harris falls on a normal distribution of all the people's on earth in regards to intelligence? This should be fun.

You seem to suffer from severe tunnel vision due to the adolescent reactionary rage you feel towards him. I understand it might be hard to think logically with all those emotions but try to act like a man for once.

>>6904522
>unfalsifiable
>psychoanalysis
Pick one. And yes, incoherence qualifies as wrong.

>wrong on everything
Make a list with quotations.

I wouldn't say he's a serious scientist or philosopher. But he's one of the better pop-scientists/philosophers out there.
Good enough to outsmart the general American standard on public display.

>>6904024
If a debate is non-philosophical, does this mean it's political?

>>6904499
People who go to fancy school are on average more intelligent though. I can definitely agree that classism and socioeconomic bullshit is at play, but do you actually not believe that?

>>6904549
> incoherence qualifies as wrong.

is that statement falsifiable?

the only way to be an scientismists or positivist is to have zero sense of irony, apparently

>>6904539
>You seem to suffer from severe tunnel vision due to the adolescent reactionary rage you feel towards him.

Not that guy, but

>>6904440
>sure I'm gonna take the word of some nobody NEET over a STANFORD NEUROSCIENTIST

Sounds more like
>severe tunnel vision due to the adolescent reactionary rage

to me

>>6904567

again, not that guy, but
>going on about someone's estimated intelligence, instead of the actual arguments.

>>6904549
>>unfalsifiable
>>psychoanalysis
>Pick one. And yes, incoherence qualifies as wrong.
is this b8 or is your tard wrangler typing for you?

>you should murder and torture people who hold back science
>morality is entirely biological and quantifiable
I'm not going to dedicate myself to trying to remove your extra chromosome. If it makes you feel better go ahead and tell your mom you won the argument kid.

>>6904539
>go ahead and estimate his intelligence
Holy shit you buy into the IQ and quantifiable bell curve as an accurate and flawless measure of human intelligence. and you call other people underage?

>>6904583

I don't give a shit about Sam Harris in particular, I give a shit about people saying dumb stuff like "Sam Harris is a brain dead moron" because they're not using words correctly.

Anyone, answer me this:

"He then argues that, problems with philosophy of science and reason in general notwithstanding, 'moral questions' will have objectively right and wrong answers which are grounded in empirical facts about what causes people to flourish."

Why?
Why is something morally good when it causes people to flourish?

I can only imagine appeals to muh feelings like
>oh, so you don't want people to flourish?
>so you want people to live miserable lives?

>>6904567
...It is, you moron.

You do realize that with every post, you unveil your wannabe intelligentsia agenda bit by bit, right?

You just really aren't as smart as you think your are, is all.

>>6904595

You notice how you made that jump from "You believe IQ is a useful measurement in regards to intelligence" to "You believe IQ is a flawless quantifiable measure of intelligence"? There's a pretty big chasm between those two concepts, sport. Try to not make such an embarrassing mistake next time.

>>6904024
Sam Harries is the embodiment of the confusion of postmodern science.
His thinking is pretty weak/limited, but he's talking about important stuff.
We'll only have more of this as neuroscience progresses further and raises philosophical questions.

>>6904608

Harris's entire argument for "objective morality" is based on those appeals.

That's why he's a moron.

>>6904608

For ethical discussion to make any sense it has to be tied to some axioms. Talking about what is "good" doesn't make sense if you can't define it. The axiom Harris starts from is that ethics is tied to the well-being of conscious creatures.

If you consider that to be a muh feelings argument I'd like to see an ethical discussion that doesn't involve any such starting points.

>>6904622
I believe so, too.
I'd like to be proven wrong though.

I actually bought into the whole fedora movement a few years ago, and that includes Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape"

>>6904596
>I am an autist who is triggered by slight hyperbole
Maybe 4chan isn't the website for you m8

There's also the possibility that Sam Harris is being obtuse on purpose.

After all, there's good money in retarded "debates" with American Christians.

>>6904627

There isn't a whole lot of matter in 'The moral landscape' other than what you've mentioned.

> The axiom Harris starts from is that ethics is tied to the well-being of conscious creatures.

I'd like to see how people will argue this to be true though.

>>6904645
That has always been my understanding too.

I'll abstain from just flailing my dick around and calling everyone else with an opinion an autist.

From the Sam Harris that I have watched/read/listened to, he seems afraid to say anything that has a lot of hard intellectual value.
More than anything, the Four Horsemen video really exposes him and Daniel Dennett as people who got good grades and just keep searching for ways to cover up their own insecurities by calling Christians various forms of 'retarded.'
He seems petty, I can't listen to him or Hitch (anymore) or Dawkins without wondering who hurt them as a child/teenage in such a way that they need to lash out against people who chose to be gleefully ignorant about the nature of reality.

>>6904652

The problem is with the definition of "well-being" not being clear. Once that definition is cleared up the only people you have to argue against are the anti-natalists. But the definition of that word is the crux of the problem.

>>6904698

Why is it "lashing out" based on some trauma? Is it not more probable that they do this because they believe it will result in a better society?

>>6904631

Depending on who you ask, "fedora" includes either side of the objective morality debate, because people just use it as a convenient cop-out for discussion.

>>6904700
I actually though "Good" and 'well-being' being tied to each other, but sure.

>>6904710
Almost idolising Hitchens kind of fedora

Watching debates to see stupid Christians get rekt kind of fedora

Debating family about religion kind of fedora

>>6904723

And people will attach either position on moral objectivity onto that personality framework, depending on what's convenient to them.

>>6904707
It's a possibility, but it goes without saying that there are good things about a world with religion, just as there would be without.
Towards the end of the Four Horseman discussion Hitch even says it himself, that if he could have religion completely disappear from the world he wouldn't do it.
At a certain point I have to believe it's more dick-measuring and schadenfreude than good-will, and like someone else said, they probably enjoy the living they make of off "owning" religious clergy.

>>6904698
To me Dawkins seems more like an honest naive "lab geek", who's simply uninterested in philosophy and generally stays out of it.
He's also not always annoyingly confrontational with religious people, I saw a decent talk he had with some English priest.

Harris, on the other hand, I can't really figure out. He's either mentally handicapped in some way or he's doing this on purpose to provoke and/or to attract casual readers.

>>6904746
Generally agree with this analysis.

I will always hold Hitchens to his mommy issues, whether that's fair or not. You'd think he knew he was showing his hand in Hitch-22.

>>6904154
Stop killing all the mockingbirds you asses.

Anti-atheists on /lit/ are getting as bad as reddit New Atheists. I tolerated the Christposting at first but you guys are becoming insufferable.

>>6904746
>who's simply uninterested in philosophy and generally stays out of it.
>...and generally stays out of it.

the guy that spends his life tweeting about ethics?

I agree on Harris though, leaning towards the "say whatever sells" interpretation.

>>6904800

His book after The Moral Landscape was about meditation. If he just wrote about what sells most instead of what interests him surely he would've picked a less niche subject matter.

>>6904791
>you guys are becoming insufferable.

After all the damage secularism has done to society in the past hundred years this is real gold.

>>6904746
All four are bad to be honest

>Hitchens
Dumbest of the four, at least he was funny

>Harris
Needs to read some ontology and epistemology before i grab a gun and shoot him in the head

>Dennet
Probably the smartest, but his views on consciouness makes me question that

>Dawkins
Said that Lawrence Krauss's A Universe from Nothing is the cosmology equivalent of On the Origin of Species, just that is enough for me to hate him forever

>>6904157
>I would understand Chomsky's tone if he thought Harris had intentionally misrepresented what he said
How about not answering what Chomsky asked a single time and asking questions Chomsky had already answered over and over because he didn't like the answer? Considering it's a mail exchange and each had days to check sources before answering and editing what they said Harris was embarassing and I don't blame Chomsky at all in terms of getting mad at his exchange.

>>6904986
Have you considered the possibility of me publishing this discussion? You may wanna go back and edit what you said there.

>>6904964
>After all the damage secularism has done to society in the past hundred years this is real gold.
Such as?

>>6904975
It's funny when an absolute idiot calls smart people stupid. I get this fuzzy feeling that cannot be produced by any other event.

>>6904024
Craig, i admire the guy, he can hold his own even though he's wrong

>>6905019
Read some Milibank kid.

>>6904024
What do you mean who won? Whoever thinks any god existing is logical obviously loses in every measurable way.

>>6905035
I'm not an idiot and they're stupid relatively to me, or at least their public persona is stupid.

>>6905055
Based on what you've said, I feel confident in my assumption that you are an idiot.

It's always funny to watch the videos where people who obviously post a lot on the Internet get the confidence to approach Hitchens with an argument or remark at some college speaking event, and they just get torn apart in seconds by him. RIP king of wit

>>6904608
>'moral questions' will have objectively right and wrong answers which are grounded in empirical facts about what causes people to flourish.
i can only see this working around an real essentialist view of reality, but that leads to implications Harris doesnt like

how does he analyze what makes us flourish?

>>6905094
>It's always funny to watch the videos

Wow, you're literally one of those reddit atheists. Instead of throwing baseless assumptions why don't you actually defend their ideas and values, go on, enlighten me with their intelligence you autistic shitlord.

>>6905128
Yeah, I'm an atheist, obviously - you're a sharp one. Cool Reddit meme tho.

Do you literally want to discuss everything about them? What I said is that you're an idiot and you're calling people smarter than you stupid. Anything beyond that wasn't even discussed, but if you'd like to, sure.

Islam is the one true religion /lit/

>>6905145
Yes, I would like to. Present me with a concise explanation of your favorite meme atheist ideas...

>>6904791
>Anti-atheists
no such thing. Atheist technically means people who reject the notion of a deity. But it has come to mean reactionaries (such as yourself) against christians.

You "tolerating" different kinds of posts that don't align with your worldview on your board is nice though thnks bby.

>>6904964
>>6905245
Proving my point tbh

>>6905053
>can't provide an argument himself
>appeals to Memebank