Sam Harris.org Reader Forum

Philosophy or Reality

2013-06-11T09:22:40+00:00

1) Evolution has made ??beliefs to bridle knowledge. Why knowledge needs to be controlled? Why does it needs to be distorted?
(Français: L’évolution a fabriqué la croyance pour brider la connaissance. Pourquoi la connaissance a-t-elle besoin d’être contrôlée? Pourquoi doit-elle être déformée?)

2) The creation of an existence only serves those that already exist, when he do not control the creation or the path that will follow this existence, the creator is an idiot or a sadist.
(Français: La création d’une existence ne sert que ceux qui existent déjà, quand il ne contrôle pas la création ou le chemin que suivra cette existence, le créateur est un idiot ou un sadique.)

Mental Illness and Sam Harris

2013-05-19T14:07:49+00:00

I’ve been thinking. Sam Harris is a very intelligent person - not only because he is very arrogant to the point of being deluded, but because he says things we all agree with in our secular western world.

Since Sam is so bright and wonderfully educated, I wonder how he will deal with the problem of unnatural states of being, although he is not a philosopher.

A state of being causing suffering is not identical to a mental illness. An illness is a bodily disorder - a state of being that ought not be.
However, to say that something physical ought to be different than it already is is to say that it was designed by a mind with intentions of it being a certain way.

(1) Imagine the following scenario: you are programming a computer software that is designed to calculate if two rectangular objects are colliding eachother. The software, after you have compiled it, ceases to function as you have intended of it to be.
In this example, the software is bugged (“ill”), because it has ceased to be as you have intended of it to be with your skills in software engineering.

(2) Now imagine the following scenario: you have a piece of software that was developed by the necessity of the preceding events. There have been no intentions of this software being produced to do anything, but it just so happens to be able to calculate when the two rectangular objects are in collision through simple techniques.

Does the software in the second example ever cease to function as it should? - no, because there is no should in being.
A thing can only be said having to be differently than it already is, if it was designed with another purpose than of that it already is.

Thus, we may conclude as follows:
1. The existence of mental illnesses (not suffering) is incompatible with mere naturalism (“atheism”).
2. Mental illnesses do exist,
3. therefore, naturalism is false.

Keep the following things in mind before evaluating this argument:
1. Psychosis and the like are real things, but if my argument is correct then there cannot be anything wrong with these things.
2. Suffering is real, but an illness is irrelevant to suffering. Many schizophrenics do not suffer as we’d like to think of them, yet our medical professions conclude that they are ‘wrong’ in how they are by our current scientific doctrines.
3. I am not concluding Christianity, and I consider myself a naturalist who denies the existence of any illnesses per the definition I provided, which is also the universal definition that laymen and scholars use.
4. Mental illness is irrelevant to morality. Being psychotic may be morally wrong, but that has no relevance to this topic.
5. I am not arguing against the existence of rationality on atheism, although I do support this sort of reasoning.

I am now a Jr Member!

2013-05-12T03:57:12+00:00

I am now a Jr Member and am very happy.

charwiz

Endangered Species

2013-05-10T03:44:04+00:00

Religion without reason is an endangered species. It’s only a matter of time. The more people learn through science, the more educated people become, is directly proportional to the confusion non reasoning people have. So in there confusion and as a last resort, they go to the internet, that place where religions go to die. There final resting place. They go to the internet to search frantically for any info on their Religious beliefs, for any way possible that they can equate their lack of reason with their religious views. There they find the apologist lacking, and their unreasonable views… unbecoming. But hope is on the horison. Because eventualy they finally, open their eyes to Reason.

Charwiz

Truth-Seeking

2013-04-20T06:27:34+00:00

So first things first: I consider myself what’s often known as a soft agnostic (that is, I can admit that I don’t know certain things, but it doesn’t mean I’m not open to particular answers, especially when it comes to the big philosophical questions).

Anyway, so I ran across this article the other day posted on a blog by some Christian apologist I’ve never heard of, and he references three “paradoxes of atheism”. The first one involved the notion of truth-seeking. This basically summed up the author’s point…

“One of the most interesting paradoxes inherent to atheism involves the intrinsic value of truth-seeking. All of us seem naturally inclined as human beings to seek the truth for its own sake, not merely for what benefits the truth can provide. For instance, if someone told us ``Believe this religion not because it is true, but because it will improve your marriage and help your career,” most of us would be revolted. And rightly so. But herein lies the first problem: it is very hard for atheists to explain why seeking the truth is intrinsically good or why we are obligated to seek it.

Most atheistic theories of morality appeal to human flourishing as the ultimate good. On this view, what is good is whatever leads to human flourishing. And while that definition does solve some problems, it leads to the very difficult conclusion that truth and truth-seeking are not ultimate goods. Indeed, if seeking the truth on any given subject would diminish human flourishing, then seeking that truth would be evil; we would be morally obligated to avoid or suppress knowledge of that truth.” (http://www.thepoachedegg.net/the-poached-egg/2013/04/three-paradoxes-of-atheism.html)

Generally I can come to pretty good responses to these sorts, but this one, oddly enough, threw me for a loop, and I’ve been caught thinking about it over the last few days.

So, given atheism, why is truth-seeking inherently worthwhile, or is it? I suppose it could be argued that truth-seeking is a key factor in human flourishing, depending how one defines flourishing (ie. the most ideal form of human flourishing involves our knowing as much as we possibly can for the sake of understanding the universe, so as to live as best as we possibly can while on Earth).

Anyway, I was hoping to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Epicureanism

2013-03-03T22:02:57+00:00

I recently founded the International Society of Friends of Epicurus, with the assistance of several Epicureans (Hanrott of the Epicurus Blog has contributed, so has Cassius of the newepicurean.com, all linked to our main page). There are several Gardens of Epicurus that meet more or less weekly (two in Greece, one in Sydney Australia—- Gardens are the name of our philosophical schools or communities), plus individual members in many cities that are beginning to form communities, mainly online.

The hope by creating the Society is to facilitate the growth of Epicureanism. I believe very strongly that we should encourage the growth of philosophical schools, like they existed in antiquity when they were mainstream, in order to ensure that the public discourse on morals and ethics will not continue to degenerate into all kinds of supernatural claims. Epicurean ethics focus on tangible human pain and suffering and on tangible human pleasure and happiness, rather than fantasies (or fears) about the afterlife.

Please feel free to visit the webpage to learn more:

http://societyofepicurus.com/

Just some basic trivia on the philosopher Epicurus:

. He was among the first to propose the theory of the atom ... 2,300 years ago
. He proposed the idea of the social contract, which is basic to much of contemporary secular law and non-violent politics
. Epicurus was one of the first philosophical materialists who taught a complete ethical system
. Epicureanism is a secular humanist philosophy for human happiness that focuses on the analyzed life, on simple living, on self-sufficiency (autarchy) and on forming strong, wholesome, egalitarian interpersonal bonds
. Thomas Jefferson was an Epicurean. So was Christopher Hitchens.

Determinism and moral responsibility

2013-01-29T14:13:51+00:00

I have an interesting book that shows how moral responsibility is increased with the knowledge of determinism. It is assumed that if one knows his will is not free he will be able to do whatever he wants and use the excuse that his actions were already determined, but that is not the case, according to this author. If anyone is interested in how moral responsibility is reconciled with determinism, please let me know.

Real world determinsim

2013-01-25T20:53:43+00:00

Following on from my previous posts on Free Will I have had more thoughts. On a similar vein, but well…..

Think of the last time you paid somebody a compliment. Everything from a simple act of courtesy to a “Wooooow you look amazing!” or “You were brilliant in there. Thanks”. Why did you do this? According to determinism these compliments are ill deserved. The person you complimented no more deserves credit for their behavior any more than they do for their pleasing facial bone structure. Think of a talented writer or poet: How can you thank them when “They” didn’t actually come up with the creativity - their brain did, and they have no control over that. You can’t think a thought before you think it. So, how can you claim credit for it. And this is my issue with a purely deterministic view of the world. One can’t deny the laws of cause - effect and yet there is a human at the center of all this. A human with a sense of self and with feelings. How can one feel self esteem and a sense of accomplishment or indeed feel good about themselves in any way when they cannot claim responsibility for their actions and thus their achievements? Is even the most minute level of pride just a vanity?

As an atheist I do not want to delude myself, but how can we attain any level of well being or indeed function at any level without the desire to improve and the pride of accomplishment?

Can we have the best of both worlds?

Harris says that he has let go of free will, but what does that mean? How does that manifest on a daily basis? Anybody else managed this golden state?

Why most Animals are not Philosophers: Fatal Flaws in Dr. Craig’s Moral Argument

2013-01-19T20:14:32+00:00

Here’s an article which mentions a debate Sam Harris had Dr. Craig. I think it is devastating to Craig’s argument.

A moral agent is defined as any being able to make moral judgments and be subject to them. Moral agents must possess two faculties. They must be self-aware else they could not make judgments with respect to their own actions and so could not be held responsible. And in as much as moral judgments are stated as propositions, they must have a faculty of language. This is why non-human animals are not moral agents (or philosophers). These basic definitions expose a complex set of errors in both Dr. Craig’s defense of his Moral Argument for God as well as the secular philosophers he cites in support of it. I begin on page 172 of his book Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics where he states his syllogism:

1) If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3) Therefore, God exists.

Craig defends his first premise by asserting that atheism implies an undifferentiated equivalence between humans and all other animals. Beginning on page 174, he states:

On a naturalistic view moral values are just by-products of socio-biological evolution. Just as a troupe of baboons exhibit co-operative behavior and even altruistic, sacrificial behavior because evolution has determined it to be advantageous in the struggle for survival, so their primate cousins homo sapiens exhibit similar behavior for the same reason. … As a result of socio-biological pressures, there has evolved among homo sapiens a sort of “herd morality” which functions well in the perpetuation of our species in the struggle for survival. But on the atheistic view there doesn’t seem to be anything about homo sapiens that makes this morality objectively true.

Crudely put, on the atheistic view human beings are just animals, and animals have no moral obligations to one another. (pg. 175)

Craig’s assertion that humans would be “just animals” under atheism is false. It could be true only if the faculties which distinguish us from other animals – self-awareness and language – were logically impossible under atheism. As long as we have those faculties, we are not “just animals” under any metaphysical view. And as long as we are human animals, we will be moral agents.

To clearly see the nature of Craig’s error we need only replace “moral obligations” with “language.” His argument then becomes “Crudely put, on the atheistic view human beings are just animals, and animals have no language.” Are we then to conclude that language would be impossible under atheism? That language itself is sufficient to prove the existence of God? His argument really has nothing to do with morality per se. It reduces to “an argument for God from human faculties not shared by other animals.”

When restated with precision, the vacuity of his argument becomes self-evident. He begins with the commonly accepted presumption that non-human animals are not moral agents, and then simply states a non sequitur where the second clause says nothing about the first: “Crudely put, on the atheistic view human beings are just animals, and non-human animals have no moral obligations to each other.” To simplify further:

Every A is B, and any B that is not A lacks the properties unique to A.

His argument is the quintessence of vacuity. Nothing follows from it. It’s nothing but the definition of a subset. It says nothing about the properties that distinguish A as a subset of B, and it certainly does not imply that those properties could not exist under atheism. It gives the illusion of being an argument only because Craig deftly omitted the necessary qualifying distinctions between “any B” and “any B that is not A.” Our moral faculty is one of the things that distinguishes us from the rest of the animals. This would be equally true under theism or atheism. It doesn’t just disappear under atheism merely because it is found only in a subset of animals. How could Craig fail to see this? Here is what he was really trying to say:

Every A is B, and no B has property P, so no A has property P.

Now we have exposed the root of his error. He implicitly asserted that “no B has property P,” that is, that no animals of any kind have moral obligations to each other under either theism or atheism. But that directly contradicts his presupposition that human animals are moral agents. Humans could not be “just animals” under atheism it they were not ontologically classed as a kind of animal independent of any metaphysical view. His argument rests first upon a false distinction between humans and other animals, as if humans were not accurately classed as “animals” under both theism and atheism, followed by a false equivalence that identifies them as “just animals” whereby he strips them of their unique faculties required for moral agency.

It’s easy to see why Craig found this argument seductive. In one fell swoop, it enabled him to prove God by simply stripping humans of the faculties required for moral agency. Everyone knows non-human animals are not moral agents so all we need do is equate humans with non-human animals and our proof is done before lunch, without even breaking a sweat on our intellectual brow. That makes for some easy work. Unfortunately, good philosophy is not known for being easy.

IRead more here.

Free will : A middle way or just acceptance of the paradox?

2013-01-10T15:42:17+00:00

In discussions on Free will and determinism the argument always seems, in my view to be skewed towards the consequences for criminals. Basically that with what we now know about the physical world and neoroscience that determinism is irrefutable and wholly incompatible with free will as we know it. Hence people can’t really be held resposible for their actions because they didn’t have any choice in the matter and that we should be more compassionate (nicer) to criminals. It’s pretty much impossible to argue with determinism if you have any kind of sensible approach to this issue at all. Everything you do must have had a prior cause. You and your brain are not immune to the laws of physics - however much you may not like it. Equally, the traditional (religious - well western religions anyway) view of free will is utterly without foundation. You simply cannot be immue to the causes happening in the world around you. Nothing anybody did would have any affect on you at all - how on Earth is that freedom? It isn’t in any meaningful way. Hence determinism wins. More science will surely only serve to prove this. Even if you say “Well if you can reason conciously then that is pretty much free will”. Not so, because every concious thought that enters your mind came from your unconcious mind several seconds before you were even aware of it - thus you didn’t “Think” it. You can’t think a thought before you think it. Yay determinism!

However, as I started by saying, there may be unpleasant ramifications for this at both a personal and society level. If we are going to use this way of thinking then certainly more compasion towards people is the way forwards. Or is it? Isn’t there something a little condesending about just treating such people with more compassion: “The poor things, they can’t help it. It’s the environmant they were brought up in.”

I can’t help but think of Christopher Hitchens when I here this, he said “Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others.”

So, if we are going to take away the ability to choose an alternative, to be the auther of our actions then it must cut both ways. This is evident in some of the disdain from some determinists for people who claim to be “Self-made”. “What a nonsense”, they exclaim, “Such pride”. Really? That’s how we are going to treat people who achieve anything? Almost with contempt that they should take pride in their accomplishments and be admired by others. I have yet to read a satisfactory answer from a determinist on this. We really need to ask: What kind of society do we want to live in? What are the consequences of adopting such a stance?

Some of the responses to this from Determinists seem to be similar to religious people when you ask them about the Old Testament “Well, obviously we don’t believe THAT”. Well…...why not? You are either responsible for your actions (If you are sane and resonable), or you are not. What is more important - Truth or a functioning society? Human beings need to genralize and surely it has to be better to generalize that you are in control of your thoughts and actions, otherwise you would be in no position to change them. Think of almost any great achiever and they will almost always believe that they are the master of their destiny. This gives them control of their lives, self esteem an self confidence. Surely the kind of people we want to have in society are those that take responsibility for their actions and strive to improve the lives of themselves and others.

Please don’t think that I am mistaking fatlaism for determinism either. I acknowledge that determinism doesn’t say that our actions don’t matter - under determinism they clearly do. I am asking us to face the societal and psychological effects.of such a belief system and to drop the horrible cynicism that people shouldn’t be sincerely rewarded and respected for their achievements. There seems to be no way to do this with “Hard determinism”.

Is it possible that their could be a middle way that simply acknowledges the contradiction and leaves it as that. Sure, its not 100% true in the philosophical sense of the word, and it may be an illusion. But that’s not the point. it may be a neccesary illusion that we would be unwise to drop so easily.

I could go on, but this is already long enough. Hope this makes sense at some level. Thanks for reading. Looking forward to rebutals!