05.08.10
Sam Harris, positivist and arrogant
Toward a Science of Morality
Nothing like a bestseller to make you cocky, cocky in this case to think you can solve the problem of morality without consulting the literature on the subject.
Beware of this nonsense: Sam Harris is smart at being a smart celebrity and not much else if he thinks he can solve the problems of morality alone, without help.
But he will have influence and create a lot of confusion along the way.
Note that Harris is a hypocrite, and denounces religion even as he harbors veiled New Age beliefs or studies he would denounce in his public.
Be wary of this arrogance. It is easy to talk up a good spiel with bad philosophy, or, in this case, neuroscience positivism.
Not to worry: he is putting in writing! So we will see, and watch the result fail, no doubt.
If you can’t get evolution right and are stuck on Darwinism, the question of morality is going to be pastiche of scientism.
First, a disclaimer and non-apology: Many of my critics fault me for not engaging more directly with the academic literature on moral philosophy. There are two reasons why I haven’t done this: First, while I have read a fair amount of this literature, I did not arrive at my position on the relationship between human values and the rest of human knowledge by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continued progress in the sciences of mind. Second, I am convinced that every appearance of terms like “metaethics,” “deontology,” “noncognitivism,” “anti-realism,” “emotivism,” and the like, directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. My goal, both in speaking at conferences like TED and in writing my book, is to start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and find helpful. Few things would make this goal harder to achieve than for me to speak and write like an academic philosopher. Of course, some discussion of philosophy is unavoidable, but my approach is to generally make an end run around many of the views and conceptual distinctions that make academic discussions of human values so inaccessible. While this is guaranteed to annoy a few people, the prominent philosophers I’ve consulted seem to understand and support what I am doing.
Darwiniana » Harris vs Kant said,
May 8, 2010 at 12:04 pm
[...] Sam Harris, positivist, and arrogant [...]