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/lit/ - Literature

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5582424 No.5582424 [Reply] [Original]

What does /lit/ think of this book? I haven't read it yet. Does Harris give a good argument or is it bullshit? And if it's bullshit, are there any other good books on morality despite the absence of God?

>> No.5582442

>>5582424
He attempts to create a moral tautology. He manages to create a sophomore level philosophical discussion with pleasant, clear prose.

Sam Harris is good at clearly and satisfying communicating simple concepts. He does not break any new ground.

>> No.5582455

He literally is the best philosopher of the last 30-50 years. No one can even touch him and what he's achieved. /lit/ surprises me in that they are so against popularity that they are willing to ignore facts. I thought it was satire at first and then i saw long arguments against him (poorly reasoned) and realised just how few people got it and how few who did get it accepted it. This place is odd...

>> No.5582465

>>5582455
Do you realize how many bleeding heart leftists there are here who leap to defend anything and anyone from the most simple of criticisms? If he seriously says "kill muslims" there's your answer. No one actually wants solutions to problems, they just want to sit around saying "GEE I WONDER WHY I HOPE THWY STOP".

>> No.5582466

>>5582424
Sam Harris is basically a religious zealot for the nebulous, poorly-defined concept of 'science.' He thinks that if he repeats words like 'science' and 'logic' and 'rationality' over and over they will be convincing to the uneducated reader who likes to see him or herself on the right side of history, for reason and against superstition, etc. In this sense he is often right, but in this sense his entire work is against the spirit of skepticism and scientific inquiry. He is a Enlightenment-utilitarian dogmatist, through and through.

He attempts to paint people who think ethics is complicated in the same light as people who are opposed to scientific or medical advancements. This is obviously stupid: scientific and medical advancements have goals that are much, much clearer than the ethical goals Harris doesn't seem to define beyond "suffering is bad." Well no shit man, suffering is bad, but are some kinds of suffering worse than others? Are some kinds of freedom and some kinds of happiness better than others? How do we measure those? Harris: "Do you really think suffering isn't bad? Happiness is good."

>> No.5582489

Read this fantastic review of it.

http://www.kenanmalik.com/reviews/harris_moral.html

Here's a quote from it and one that can pretty much be said to 'sum it up' as it were:

Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as ‘adaptation’, ‘speciation’, ‘homology’, ‘phylogenetics’ or ‘kin selection’ would ‘increase the amount of boredom in the universe’. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument? It is one thing to want to ‘start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and can find helpful’, something that many of us, including many of those boring moral philosophers, seek to do. It is quite another to imagine that you can engage in any kind of conversation, with any kind of audience, by willfully ignoring the relevant scholarship because it is ‘boring’.

>> No.5582490

>>5582424
>And if it's bullshit, are there any other good books on morality despite the absence of God?
Stirner - The Ego and Its Own

>> No.5582494

>>5582465
0 relevance

>> No.5582495

>>5582465
>>5582455
I hated Sam Harris long before I knew about his opinion on Islam. Only based on The Moral Landscape. It's just retarded.

>> No.5582513

>>5582455

Sam, pls go.

>> No.5582528

>>5582513
yup, this is essentially it. people who know nothing, posting nothing

>> No.5582562

>>5582495
I hate him because he tries to talk about things like religion or philosophy despite the fact he knows next to nothing about them. What the fuck does a neuroscientist know about ethics and morals? Just because he shouts 'science' and 'logic' doesn't mean shit. He knows less about logic than I know about air conditioners. To say something like it's right to throw out all scholarly work on moral philosophy simply because of 'Muh Neuroscience' without having bothered to read it is insane. He's an embarrassment and has no business writing about philosophy or anything of that nature. Dawkins is the same fucking way. Stick to your field and what you know.

>> No.5582576

>>5582562
He has a phd in philosophy

>> No.5582581

>>5582576
that's more of a condemnation of the field of the philosophy than anything he'll ever write

>> No.5582582

>>5582576
Yeah but he hurt that anons feelings by mot pretending sociology is valid

>> No.5582584

>>5582576
lmao no he doesn't. He has a B.A. Get the fuck out of here. If he had a PhD he wouldn't sound like a senior in high school after reading the Republic when he talks about ethics.

>> No.5582609

>>5582576
>He has a phd in philosophy
doesn't mean shit. I've read actual PhD theses in philosophy, some of them were also retarded.

>> No.5582620

>>5582609
He does not have a PhD in philosophy. He has a B.A. Stop spreading that stupid rumor. You really think a guy with a PhD in philosophy would say the things he says? He has never read anything of any moral philosopher and then wrote a book about moral philosophy. Come on man.

>> No.5582623

Ethics has been a joke and waste of time until we knew how the brain worked. He is right to ignore centuries of conjecture and guess-work. Deal with it, romantics.

>> No.5582627

>Does Harris give a good argument or is it bullshit?

Not bullshit at all. He gives an incredibly good argument for how and why eudaimonia is a model sculpted by various models that stem from empirical observation. There is no great revelation, but it needed to be said; a description of how morality actually functions, and how the realization of this can influence the structure of our ethical models. But you didn't really want to know that did you? You just want people to knee-jerk, post their hat meme and shout about reddit, don't you?

>> No.5582633

>>5582623
>Ethics has been a joke and waste of time until we knew how the brain worked. He is right to ignore centuries of conjecture and guess-work. Deal with it, romantics.
That's bullshit. Ethics had been a waste of time for hundreds of years before we invented neuroscience, and neuroscience hasn't had any impact on this.

>> No.5582638

>>5582623
Right so when you have someone like David Brent who is so happy because he think everyone loves him and he's a great boss despite the fact that people hate him, neurologically he is completely happy despite the fact he's living in an illusion. In a lie. So is he really happy? Can neuroscience explain that? How is it that some women are neurologically happy living in a place like Saudi Arabia despite the fact western civilization believes it is 'wrong' how they are treated there? If they are happy and the 'terrible' way they are treated is making them happy, shouldn't it then be a good thing? By Harris' philosophy, ethics is defined by well-being. So if treating women like shit(how we perceive it) makes them happy, isn't that then a good thing?

>> No.5582645

>>5582638
OMG, like hurting ppl is "bad", but I like having my balls electrocuted and thrashed while chained to the ceiling, so "bad" is right and wrong. #deep

>> No.5582648

>>5582627
>measure everyone's brains to see how happy they are
>make every decision so that people become happier

Well, that sounds nice, but it's incredibly naive. Astronomically naive. To derive any practical ethical decision from this method would involve some heavy long-term lab setups of entire human populations living in the lab. It's just not workeable. You can't even describe a hypothetical scenario in which this is workeable.

Even in a science fiction scenario where everyone's happiness is constantly measured and the laws are adapted on the spot to make everyone as happy as possible, the guys who develop, service, and monitor the machines/algorithms that are involved in monitoring the happiness would just be in a ridiculous position of power, the same way we nowadays have politicans and capitalists.

>> No.5582654

>>5582645
Hey if you want to view it from a purely scientific point of view, then yes. If people are happy being tortured, and if they weren't being tortured they'd be unhappy, would be ethical to stop them from being tortured just because WE view torture as a bad thing because it makes us feel bad?

>> No.5582656

http://www.naturalism.org/Dennett_reflections_on_Harris%27s_Free_Will.pdf

REKT
E
K
T

>> No.5582676

>>5582654

You're forgetting that Sam Harris feels bad whenever someone's beliefs or preferences differ significantly from his own. In these cases, preferring things that depart from the Sam Harris gold standard makes Sam Harris suffer, and Sam Harris's suffering outweighs yours.

It's all very elegant and scientific.

>> No.5582685

>>5582676
>SAM HARRIS NO HAPPY
>SAM HARRIS SHOUT 'SCIENCE'
>SAM HARRIS SHOUT 'LOGIC'
>SAM HARRIS WIN

He's so fucking stupid to say that we should try to make everyone happy. Again, what if their neurological happiness is defined by things that some like say Sam Harris views as horrible? What if the only way to make 'x' people happy is by beheading 'x' population? Is it right then for them to do that because their neurological state is now 'happy'? Their neurological well-being is now good as a result of these beheadings, therefore, the beheadings must be right according to Sam.

>> No.5582694

>>5582648
>Measuring happiness
Have you actually read the book, or are you arguing against a presumed plagiarism of half-baked utilitarianism? Judging by how off your critique is, I'm going to have to conclude that you haven't read it.

>> No.5582695

>>5582685
Additionally, the neurological well-being of the population being beheaded is now 'sad'. So then it is not moral to behead them? But we want to make that other population happy. What if there is no other way to make them happy? Does Sam Harris then exterminate them because happiness for them is unattainable because it makes another's well-being suffer?

By giving money to African children, their well-being is now better, but our children who wanted that Xbox 1 for christmas and won't get it as a result of that are now feeling bad. Is it ethical to make our children feel bad just to make some African person we've never met feel good?

>> No.5582716

>>5582694
>Have you actually read the book, or are you arguing against a presumed plagiarism of half-baked utilitarianism? Judging by how off your critique is, I'm going to have to conclude that you haven't read it.
No, I haven't. I watched something like 5 minutes of him speak, though. Is there a meaningful solution in the book to the problem I describe?

>> No.5582731

>ITT, 300 posts of:
>People setting fire to the utility monster without knowing it.
>People attacking the evil the STEM strawman.
>People trashing every argument by John Stuart Mill without knowing it.
>People tipping hats and moaning about reddit and euphoria.
>People trashing consequentialism, deontology, and pragmatism with single sentence insults without knowing it.
>People arguing moral relativism and rejecting Korzybskian inter-subjective moral frameworks without knowing it.
>People that haven't read this book pretending they have read and understood this book.

>> No.5582750

>>5582716
>Is there a meaningful solution in the book to the problem I describe?
The problem you describe isn't a problem in the book as Harris doesn't say we could form a model that considers the 'happiness' of every citizen on an individual level.

>> No.5582760

I just finished this book last week. He gives some half baked moral axioms based on the most vaguely defined terms (morality = maximizing well being), handwaves centuries of refutations to his thesis, and then proceeds to talk about religion for more than half of the book. It was a complete waste of my time but I felt obligated to read it so I could understand why so many people seem to worship this guy.

>> No.5582773

>>5582760
lmao exactly. He's such a tool. If the well-being of a population can be maximized by beheading another population, then isn't that moral? But wait we're fucking with the well-being of the other population so it isn't. But wait, the USA fucks with the well-being of every population on Earth when its well-being is disrupted. Harris even talks about eradication. What if that population won't be happy unless it beheads these people. Should we then eradicate them? What if the 'power level' was reversed and the Islamic State had more power than the U.S. Their well-being is effected by us, so then they'd be in the right to eradicate us then wouldn't they?

>> No.5582792

>>5582731
Harris doesn't get nearly as specific as Mill. Mill explains and justifies utilitarianism, Harris seems to think it's so obvious it needs no argument. He doesn't get to stuff like "utility monster" because he's so completely uninterested in the actual philosophical issues.

>> No.5582795 [DELETED] 

>>5582792
>Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as ‘adaptation’, ‘speciation’, ‘homology’, ‘phylogenetics’ or ‘kin selection’ would ‘increase the amount of boredom in the universe’. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument? It is one thing to want to ‘start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and can find helpful’, something that many of us, including many of those boring moral philosophers, seek to do. It is quite another to imagine that you can engage in any kind of conversation, with any kind of audience, by willfully ignoring the relevant scholarship because it is ‘boring’.
Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as ‘adaptation’, ‘speciation’, ‘homology’, ‘phylogenetics’ or ‘kin selection’ would ‘increase the amount of boredom in the universe’. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument? It is one thing to want to ‘start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and can find helpful’, something that many of us, including many of those boring moral philosophers, seek to do. It is quite another to imagine that you can engage in any kind of conversation, with any kind of audience, by willfully ignoring the relevant scholarship because it is ‘boring’.

>> No.5582802

>>5582792
>>>>>>5582489

>> No.5582804

>>5582750
>Harris doesn't say we could form a model that considers the 'happiness' of every citizen on an individual level
But if you implement a policy that has an effect on society, how would you know whose happiness is affected in what way without measuring them all? It's not exactly a trivial system...

>> No.5582805

It's bullshit
>And if it's bullshit, are there any other good books on morality despite the absence of God?
Literally every moral philosophy book

>> No.5582810
File: 512 KB, 1920x1600, 45XKX7i.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5582810

>> No.5582814

>>5582750
Then if every citizen isn't happy how can the entire universe be happy? He'd have to test every human being to see if they are neurologically happy. If they are not, then what? What if their happiness is impossible to obtain? Should they be killed? What if their beliefs prevent them from 'happy' according to Harris' Western values. Should they be killed?

>> No.5582819
File: 486 KB, 821x1557, xtmj5bE.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5582819

>> No.5582821

>>5582810
>>5582819
I fucking love these lmao

>> No.5582822
File: 402 KB, 920x2492, N8QEVVD.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5582822

>> No.5582828

>>5582822
Best one for sure lmao

>> No.5582886

>>5582804
>But if you implement a policy that has an effect on society, how would you know whose happiness is affected in what way without measuring them all?
You can't and you don't. We can form game theory models of aggregated human dispositions. In a very crude way, we can have a model that demonstrates that a collective body will hold murdering teenagers and raping the corpses as a Wittgenstein "boo"(inter-subjectively immoral) by, say, 99.8% of the population, yet there will still be disgruntled Ted Bundy's. Harris isn't saying that we ought to adopt that model because it's the consensus, though.

>> No.5582914

>>5582802
>>5582489
agreed completely with that piece, thanks for linking it. as far as I'm concerned it ends the debate on Harris completely. also it looks like I >>5582466 agreed with it before I even read it.

>> No.5582931

>>5582466
>Harris doesn't seem to define beyond "suffering is bad."
Harris doesn't argue that suffering is bad. He argues that 'suffering is bad' is a model held by the majority and every aspect of suffering can be assessed empirically.

>> No.5582941

>>5582931
Suffering to one person can be paradise to another. Harris is way out of his league in talking about ethics and morality. He really looks like an idiot when he tries. How do you even DEFINE suffering? Western suffering is very different from Eastern or Middle Easter suffering. He doesn't even define it.

>> No.5582944

>>5582914
It is a good piece. Of course the Harris brown-nosers will say it's bullshit but whatever. He's a fish out of water in talking about things like this.

>> No.5582946

>>5582941
>Suffering to one person can be paradise to another. >>5582886

>> No.5582955

>>5582822
>that Dennett
I laughed.

>> No.5582964

>>5582946
Okay so you link to something I responded to. And...???? What people did you study? Western people? The entire planet? So the maximum suffering that Harris describes is meant to be some kind of point of reference? That's bullshit. There is no point of reference if you try to think about morality in a scientific way. There is NEVER a consensus when it comes to ethics as there is when it comes to scientific topics. In science one can prove something and that's final. Detractors merely have to be shown the proof. As for ethics and morality, there is no absolute to it(unless you bring in God). There is no point of reference when it comes to morals and ethics because they change from person to person and civilization to civilization.

>> No.5583017

>>5582931
Declaring that something can be assessed empirically is a hell of a lot harder than actually coming up with a way assessing it empirically. (In fact, coming up with a way of assessing states of the world empirically is basically THE ENTIRE FIELD OF PHILOSOPHY, and not just utilitarianism!)

The way Harris uses the word "empirically" is the way he uses "rational," "objective," and "logical"--as an emotional appeal to people with enough formal education in the sciences to know what the good words are.

>> No.5583061

>>5583017
He tries to appeal to authority on a subconscious level I think. It's not like you couldn't say stupid shit while using smart words, yet people are more likely to buy into your point when you talk eloquently.

>> No.5584359

>>5582424
>Be Sam Harris
>Argue that science tells us what is moral
>Postulate that improving well-being is what is moral
>Don't back that claim up with science
lolitrollu

>> No.5584496

>>5582944
>>5582489
He has said it's for a popular audience. He's well-read and is obviously versed in philosophy -- in fact, it's why he got into neuroscience. Keep on reading reviews for books you've never read to compensate for your intellectual laziness, though.

>> No.5584505

>>5584359
This, OP.

>> No.5584510

I take him about as seriously as those who say science proves the existence of God.

>> No.5584531

>>5584496
>Obviously versed in philosophy

>Openly states he has never bothered to read moral philosophy
>Writes a book about moral philosophy based on his masturbatory sessions to MRI scans

Keep on reading a guy who has a B.A. in philosophy(gifted from Socrates himself) and is a neuroscientist without any philosophical expertise whatsoever and who claims that we can throw out every moral philosophical work in existence because of 'muh neuroscience' to compensate for your intellectual laziness though.

>> No.5584553

>>5584496
it's only 200 pages so I'm gonna find a pdf and hate-read it all tonight just so I can make fun of his dumb ass ideas better on the inter net

>> No.5585359

>>5582931
>every aspect of suffering can be assessed empirically
This seems possible, but it's foolish to make a claim like this given our current scientific development.

>> No.5585370

>>5584531
>BA
Wait, you can have only a BA and people will consider you a professional philosopher? I should write a book.