I used to be on board with the whole "lol Ben Stiller meditation master new plebtheist", but holy shit, listening to this guy's podcast and some of his interviews, how can anyone not consider this dude a genius?
Can you imagine him and Zizek in a debate without the latter resorting to continental cop-outs in a blabbering sniffing frenzy, while Harris keeps a Still mindset and a rational line of thinking?
Kill yourself
>muh scientism
>muh obsession with rationality and reason to the point of being totally blind to why the human mind even conceived metaphysics in the first place
how can these redditors miss the point so fucking hard
What are some of your favorite moments OP? Preferably with links.
Okay I've been looking for a straight answer to who he is and what he believes. My brother used to idolize him and Eckhart Tolle, and he still likes them, but he thinks Harris comes off as arrogant now. I've tried, but I can't get a clear answer to what Harris is about.
I think my brother likes how dispassionate and impartial he sells himself as. I also think Harris's influence has caused him to embrace subjectivism somehow.
Can anyone point me to the most essential 1-5 hours of listening or reading? Probably gonna take the plunge and listen to JRE 804.
Harris is a reasonable lad. His podcast is good you can skip the religion/Islam stuff if that's not your thing, there really is a lot of it.
Not that I don't think he's right on these subjects but I don't need any more convincing.
Harris is a pleb who has to confront his failure to beat Hume.
Also, he is very good at deflecting on his knowledge of neuroscience.
Not only that moral facts exist, but that they are grounded in reality somehow and as such a kind of eternal law of nature. Disagree with this and he'll acuse you of wanting to justify pedophilia or something. Also somehow torture is good if the US does it but not anyone else somehow.
I don't know if I'd call him a genius.
Smart as fuck though.
Hume couldn't even confront his failure to beat Hume. It's a nice bit of theoretical scepticism but at the end of the day science 'just works' regardless of that technicality.
>watches ted talk
>"science can answer moral questions"
>only talks about muslim women not being stoned/science allowing us to live longer
Yeah, that's why there have been thousands of bogus "peer-reviewed" studied released over the years that are pure nonsense because it "just werks".
More like the four Horsemen of the reductionists!
When will Scientism die?
Well, planes still fly even though Hume says 'dude you like can't know if the last time is a guarantee for the next time bro the laws of physics might change'
Okay I'm watching it now. It's more like
>science can answer utilitarian questions
Interesting, but this doesn't really seem like philosophy because it doesn't address the more fundamental question of "Why utilitarianism instead of x, y, or z?"
moar
when smug continentals stop trolling people with sophistry
Way to completely misunderstand Hume.
Hume never advocated applying this to our methods, he simply recognised this problem but offered the sceptical solution of living ourselves in this manner anyway.
Also, your points don't address Hume's point about morality. You are using the fact science "just werks" as somehow comparable to Harris's claim that science can inform moral decisions but this is a large leap with no basis.
I'm not a continental, thanks.
I've listened to him and his calm, rational manner of speaking is very convincing and somehting to copy if youre into debating.
On the other hand its obvious hes not that well read and seems a bit like a pseud who decided to become an intellectual after weatching some Hitchens videos
We'll see how good this guy handles himself with Jordan peterson
bump for this, I'm genuinely interested now, since I am on the same boat that OP used to be
>Still
Subtle
>moar
Zizek had a kind of proxy argument with him on the torture thing. Probably turns up if you search something like zizek torture pill. Good fun!
hopefully if peterson doesn't die by then
Zizek is not very good at debates.
He's good at writing books. But he's not good at making his case against another party.
"B-b-b-but muh Lacan.. And we need Hegel and dreams, uhhhh, I claim."
His lectures get extremely repetitive and you have to look each time for a nugget of novelty in them. He's honestly convinced most of us who go watch him haven't heard of his Starbucks shit or cutting the balls off instead of putting dust on them.
Sam Harris on the other hand is a modern day Socrates who will BTFO your sophist ass without ever showing any anger or disgust on his part. Rip you apart and you'll only notice the lethal wounds after he's gone. He truly is reason incarnate, the logos manifested.
lol what a freakin' hilarious post
Greatest philosopher since Hume. Harris will go down in history as the man to finally solve the is-ought problem.
As Schopenhauer said: Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Read more at: brainyquote.com
nice bait
Are you shitposting?
His book Moral Landscape didn't address the is-ought problem whatsoever.
Well, maybe you should read it again because that is the central theme of the book.
sam harris literally gave $10,000 to someone for proving that he never solved the is/ought problem.
Publicity stunt. Harris loves toying with anti-science philosophers.
Le just reread the book
Why don't you elucidate, pleb? Oh that's right because you know he didn't.
Epic shitposting.
Go back to plebbit.
>He actually believes you can derive is/ought, and morality in general, from science
Hey Sam, I'll take my $10k now please.
Le just teach me because I'm too lazy to read the book for myself
Is the only alternative to ignoring the is/ought problem moral nihilism?
I would love to see Harris and Hume together on the Charlie Rose show.
Except Sam Harris literally held a competition for who could change his mind after he got so much criticism. Someone won the competition and he even posted the guy's essay on his website.
Kill yourself, brainlet.
His goal was to get people like you talking. And guess what? It worked.
I don't want to brag but pretty much every day I talk to Sam on Google Hangouts and it was my idea for him to do the contest. I introduced him to Eric Bischoff's book Controversy Creates Cash. Since doing the "contest" his book sales have tripled. Yeah, so don't pretend to know more than me about Sam. The blog and podcast are him in character. I know the real man, unlike every single other person on this board.
Le it was all an epic plan
Brainlet.
Epic.
You are such an ignoramus.
You are an effeminate nu-male.
>Hah I hang with Sam on like Google hangouts
Laughing at you from behind my screen. Go on, reply again so I can laugh at you, dork.
Your envy is palpable.
Sam employs me to talk to him at least once an hour on AOL instant messenger and he says you are full of shit.
Thanks for making me laugh again, dork.
Aww, Mr. Tough Guy behind his keyboard. I seriously fucking doubt you would say these things to my face.
>Aww, Mr. Tough Guy
Dork continues to type like an effeminate nu-male. What a surprise.
Stop projecting.
Post a picture if you're so tough. Not only do you come across as a dumbass, you come across as a huge pussy too. Let's see a picture. I'm waiting.
Dorks triggered once again.
Keep replying, it only makes me laugh to see you so triggered.
underrated as fuck
Look everyone, he refuses to post a picture but I am the dork nu-male. Laugh all you want but next time you go to the bathroom to sit down and pee you'll see your scrawny ass in the mirror and realize just how right I am.
Cringe post.
Cringe life. I bet you sleep on the same twin sized mattress you slept on as a kid.
what a great thread
Strange reply, projecting?
You're gay.
his podcast, not JRE lol
>this whole exchange between 2 retards
Veeky Forums
Looking at your post history now and it's pathetic.
well free will is an option as well which kinda breaks the is ought to problem. you can either pretend the is ought to problem isn't there, accept it and become a nihilist, or try to defend some form of free will
>being totally blind to why the human mind even conceived metaphysics in the first place
go on...
Not him, but
Screenshot Harris convo, even the slightest hint, and we'll all concede. Until then, you are just a shitposter bra.
Child.
I'll post a screenshot when gay boy posts a picture of himself shirtless.
This.
This is why Veeky Forums blows now. Edgelorfs hint at having so profound insight and either greentext cop out because le memes or dont actually have that secret knowledge and merely want to feign contrarianism.
I miss the old lit, straight out the gold lit. Please be a pretentious fuck and slaptype the fuck out of me. But please also make sure it has content.
inb4
Irony
Newfag
>free will is an option as well
It's not.
Go back to Reddit.
Have a tab open right now. Reddit is a lot better than this shit website if you can find the right subreddits.
So that's a no. If you really conversed with Harris and were eager to prove so (as your earlier comments led us to believe), than you would ne smart enough to understand the playing field here i.e., this site is dominated by faggots who inflate their egos and then runaway. That's literally the point. So now, yet again, another promising user too has been discarded to the realm of faggotrt merely for not wanting to end the shitpost joke or prove his true intellect to us. In short, a friend of Sam Harris wouldn't be so petty. Also, yes, I realize how much of a faggot I am for playing into all of this I know this is precisely what you wanted. I will kill myself now.
name some pls
tl;dr
You are gay kys tits or gtfo
Here's a rare pic of Sam that he sent me on Google Hangouts.
Lol thanks for proving you're from there.
Could tell by the way you type. Loser!
>you can either pretend the is ought to problem isn't there, accept it and become a nihilist, or try to defend some form of free will
If everyone was dead, there would be no human world: it is up to us to decide if their ought to be a human world. Those who prefer to exist, than not, declare there ought to be a human world. In order for there to most assure a long lasting healthy human world, it has been determined/discovered, there ought be rules. If there is no rules, the overwhelming majority of existing entities, likely do not desire such, and the livelihood of the coherent human world is threatened, which we have already seen, the collective major majority of conscious intelligence, ought not want to be the case, so there can be a case which, by which one can successfully declare what ought to be,
I suppose the problem, stems from, 'objective' knowledge of is/ought?
There is no objective concrete necessitation, that the human world must exist, or that no humans ought exist: (if there is no God) there is no is/ought from any source outside of the human desire (besides the laws of nature: the attempt to seek or discuss moral or metaphysical information, is the potential for is/ought morality to be derivable from the laws of nature?) :
the trouble then goes to democracy, if it is only the collective of each individual, which determines what is and ought should be, it is possible for their thinking to be fallible: but if it is possible for a person to persons thinking to be more or less fallible on this subject, then does this imply, that there is some objective standard, for an individual approaching, morally/lawfully what is and ought should be?
over my head
>le reddit man
Can't wait to see him get BTFO by /ourguy/ Jordan Peterson
I'm impressed by his writing about gun control, it was very pragmatic and he seemed to actually know what he was talking about. But I also heard him give an hours long talk about free will, which was pure sophistry and semantics. He only really gave one argument for how rejecting free will would make any difference to one's worldview, which was that if we don't believe people have free will we won't hate them for their actions and will be more at peace. And that's at least partly bullshit because people often do get angry at inanimate objects in much the same way they get angry at other people, even without philosophically believing in their free will. e.g. "Fucking computer, why won't you fucking work, you piece of shit? I hate you. I'd punch this thing if it weren't so expensive."
I simply don't understand how a hard determinist like Sam Harris can be so adamant in defending the idea of objective moral facts. Saying an action is objectively "good" or "bad" only makes sense if you assume you could have done otherwise, which is clearly false when you've taken the view that free will is bullshit. Human moral intuitions are merely biological instincts to be studied by evolutionary psychology.
Sam Harris's crude attempt to prove science supports utilitarianism reminds me of the common characterization of Sophisticated Theists as otherwise intelligent people who are afraid of allowing the public to accept the full extent of atheism. "Don't worry about atheism leading to moral nihilism because there is a God" becomes "Don't worry about atheism leading to moral nihilism because there is science."
Waking Up is a very good no bullshit introduction to Eastern philosophy, though, and I would recommend it.
>I'm right
>No, I don't have an argument, go read a book and make my argument for me
Because metaphysics concerns itself with questions outside the realm of science and rational understanding of the world
Science is only good at figuring out stuff that can be tested about the world
But it can't address some questions that might be reasonable to ask
Not OP, but these are some very good ones that aren't too long:
SH on Black Lives Matter:
youtube.com
Conspiracy theories:
youtube.com
Ted talk on AI / superintelligence:
youtube.com
Just poke around YouTube. Tons of great clips and compilations.
>Saying an action is objectively "good" or "bad" only makes sense if you assume you could have done otherwise, which is clearly false when you've taken the view that free will is bullshit
No, questions of objectively considering things good or bad still make sense if you don't believe in free will. You are making it sound as if the philosophy surrounding the idea of free will is positing that we literally have everything decided for us at all times, and thus could never hope to have "done otherwise" in some action of our own, which isn't what free will is about.
The issues explored by the debate around free will are mostly about the extent to which many factors influencing our lives are out of our control, such as our IQ. It is essentially a rejection of the belief that we can fully control our lives and bring it to a desired outcome once we have enough freedom and force of will to do so - a belief that people like Sam would argue lie at the root of most forms of arrogance. For example, a successful businessman drawing his self-worth entirely out of his interpretation that he had no help in life, and that his success lies entirely in his own hard graft and determination, rather than from genetically inherited traits (like IQ) enabling him to bypass variables that for others are insurmountable obstacles.
HAH. Good catch, and bravo OP.
January 16th, 2017 - The day Sam Harris converted to Christianity.
He actually makes the joke that he looks like Ben Stiller towards the end of the first video. kek'd
We don't need another Socrates, or another Jew with a new and improved ontology.
>which isn't what free will is about.
There are multiple layers of the philosophical debate and understanding of what the word free will means and how it relates to any possible existing in reality
Or good old fashioned religion. If God exists, the is-ought problem is solved because God says it is.
Fucking thissssssssssssssssssss
I am actually really fkn excited about it
Was freaking gut wrenching seeing him cry in his latest youtube vid, although it did leave me with a sense of disgust.
You should see a psychiatrist
>Sam Harris
>Stanford, B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000
>Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience UC Los Angelos
Why the fuck are you guys hating on him? Isn't he a litard like the rest of you? It seems the only difference is that he actually know some science. Like any good philosopher who's not a joke.
KeK you made me laugh. Have a you.
He's only written like 2 papers on neuroscience and both were badly received
who's he
The guy has a fanatical faith in the human mind. The way he talks about rationality like it's some kind of superpower is cringeworthy. He, and all of you, need to read more.
This is how I know you have no idea what you're talking about because contemp. ethics has already moved way passed the is-ought problem. People jus bring it up to Harris because it's a convenient example of one of the many problems that he fails to address. And then he thinks philosophers are obsessed with it jus because they keep annoying him with it lol