Sam Harris

I consider this a deeply thought-out book that anticipated and spelled out its trivial criticisms that Sam has since responded to for some reason. I wouldn’t bother waffling with Blackford et al, I would answer the criticism that the moral problems are not solvable in principle, which I don’t think they are. Anyone can have a go now, with fabricated data. Some worked examples would settle it.

However, if you accept his presuppositions, which I think one should, whether one ‘objectively’ should or not, he missed the solution in the final chapter. The monist neuroscientist knows we live in a virtual reality. If you don’t want to live in a virtual reality, then I don’t know what you mean, and neither do you. The solution is to have x virtual realities, where x is the number of conscious creatures.

This way, every conscious creature can achieve maximal well-being. Naturally the futile ‘suffering’ would be done by zombie minds. etc. I don’t think this needs a push as it will come by exaption anyway. But the whole book seemed to be building up to this correct solution and ended before the logic had been followed all the way.

All zero-sum and intractable dilemmas are solved. The fool’s paradise objection is obsolete as we now know we live in a fool’s reality. Apart from people who are ghosts of course. Woo.

bendigeidfran - 10 March 2011 08:16 AM

All zero-sum and intractable dilemmas are solved. The fool’s paradise objection is obsolete as we now know we live in a fool’s reality. Apart from people who are ghosts of course. Woo.

I think we are all ghosts (symbolically speaking) until we accept just the fact that we exist period. Apparent non-existence, ie “death”, must also, therefore, be accepted. Religion, merely as one example (given that a science brain can also, and often, demonstrate forms of institutional thinking), seems to imagine heavenly realities in some vain attempt to escape and deny this fact. In our denial of the apparent fact of non-existence we also tend to deny existence. And we do this “denial” through mindless conceptualizing, emotional conflicts, endless categorizing of “existence” (creating more and more noisy labels and boxes), and many many other distractions. Distractions from our own fears and doubts. Conceptualizing (about objects) and emoting (toward objects) in order to merely comfort ourselves. Merely pursuing objects for a false sense of security. Knowledge also being an object toward which we seek just as if it was a mother’s breast.

I think the awkward fact is that we don’t exist. Not really. I mean we do in the sense that rocks do, but no more. We are rocks expressed as people. Now of course this can’t be felt or believed, but all neuroscience will do is confirm the machinery.  The counter argument is that magic is involved, and we haven’t found any magic. Magic or machines.

The preposterous fact that mere geared and logic-gated etc falling dominoes can express as superior-to-human thinking, as demonstrated by chess computers etc reveals unconscious thought to be the best. We could look at the savant or consider catching a ball if we wanted human examples.

So conscious thought is retarded and cannot compete on a level thinking field.

For ethics, as Sam’s friend Einstein says, we must have arbitrary starting axioms. You can hazily link these to evolutionary directives, but never get ought from is. That doesn’t matter. Pretend you can. The stops cannot be calculated, and never can. It’s not difficult, it’s impossible.

Imagine you thought an abortion kill-date was a moral question. And you wanted to go with the well-being of conscious creatures. You couldn’t calculate it with a time machine even. The answer would vary with time and geography and the various memeplexes, and you would have to stop the calculation arbitrarily. So Sam’s thesis is ridiculous.

We don’t exist. We only think we do.  Arguing for the fact that we exist is only to talk about thinking. And as talking IS thinking, it is to merely think about thinking. But who is it that is thinking? I can’t be thinking because I, also, am merely a thought. There is only awareness of thought (and only awareness of the thought of “I”). There isn’t “I am aware of thought.”  If I could be aware of thought, then there would be two processes. The process of “I” and the process of “thought”.  I agree with you, therefore, that we are as much as a rock than anything else. When there is awareness of rock, there is just rock. There is no “I” being aware of rock. A rock only exists via the senses. Senses and sensed rock must co-exist as one process. Therefore there is no one sensing a rock. Arguing that “we must accept that we exist, period” is merely to say that we are also a rock and everything else sensed. “We”, as a bunch of separate I’s, is not true.  “We” as everything, including other I’s, is closer to truth. When there is awareness of other, there is just other. Or, more accurately, there is just awareness. So, does awareness exist? No. There is just existence. And what we may think of existence is another matter. The statement “what we may think of existence” is only a matter that arises within the confines, or limits, of the brain. It is thought that is very very limited. It is an endless circle. It appears to start at one point, but then always returns to the same point. One must, in the final analysis (to be relieved of this circular structure), get “out of one’s mind.”