09.24.11

Sam Harris ebook/Kant, lying, politics…

Posted in General at 12:27 pm by nemo

Sam Harris’ ebook on Lying

I am relinking to this to keep a debate open here, in my own mind, at least. Harris surprised me, in the middle of my criticisms of his The Moral Landscape, with his near-Kantian take on lying. This view doesn’t seem compatible with his useless utilitarian ethics. His stance is courageous, but/and will probably end by discrediting his larger framework. Terrific. He can move on to something serious.
I have yet to read his book, so…

But I recite this link in part to connect with Darwiniana (among other reasons), evolution:

Humans have evolved to lie well, and no doubt you’ve seen the social lubrication at work. In many cases, we might not think of it as a true “lie”: perhaps a “white lie” once in a blue moon, the omission of a sensitive detail here and there, false encouragement of others when we see no benefit in dashing someone’s hopes, and the list goes on. In LYING, Sam Harris demonstrates how to benefit from being brutally—but pragmatically—honest. It’s a compelling little book with a big impact.

Tim Ferriss, angel investor and author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers, The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek

Harris is in trouble with what is probably his Darwinian view of man, I would guess with high probability. As this blurb mis-states the issue: ‘humans have evolved to lie well’??? Really? Where’s the proof. We really don’t know how morality evolved, and the ‘common ordinary morality’ depicted by Kant is a tough nut to crack as to the understanding of morality, and/or how it evolved.
No doubt some ‘natural selection’ process might well deteriorate the basic ethical framework of that evolved morality, but the macro and the micro, well, they are different things.
The whole question here is goiing to be garbage in, garbage out. Harris is obviously in the standard muddle over darwinism, to the vitiation of all that he is trying to do.

I recommend looking at the Kantian tradition on this question, and Kantian ethics, which despite its probable contradictions here, remains, as indeed Harris senses more generally, a cogent starting point, the source no doubt of Harris’ strong stand on lying.
We have lost perspective on this question: Kant came at the last moment when a stand against Machiavellian politics was still possible, that is, at a moment of revolutionary action. But that revolutionary tradition didn’t learn much from Kant, more from Hegel, no doubt. Machiavelli is an acute, yet corrupting influence from the pre-democratic age. Sorry to say it, but it is true. But the tares were resown by him, and have displaced Kant (starting with figures like Hegel/Marx). Unlike the question of slavery, which achieved abolition, the basic corruption of politics passed into the demoractic age. The question is no doubt complex, but the final outcome should caution against the Machiavellian idee fixe.
Kant’s take here, like that of Harris, is a motion against the tide.
If you think it doesn’t matter, well, poor sucker. The gangster politicians have taken over the government, and, well, lied about what they did. Since they lied, your reenslavement will happen behind a veil of lies. And the diseasse seems progressive.

In general, Kant sensed rightly that the ‘right to lie’ that Benjamen Constant thought appropriate for politicians is the wrong approach, and we can see now has left us without any real government.
You need to see the point: don’t be an asshole here and think you have a government of free men.

Look at the politics of the last ten years, and then the last two generations: we can see the final stage of decay and loss of democratic government. All in the full tide of the ‘political lie’. And the surface of democracy continues, as a lie.
Kant was denounced as a fool, but he will get the last laugh, in a fiendish din of cackling devils.

Btw, Stuart Kauffman in his Reinventing the Sacred replays the standard attack on the issue of a contradiction in Kant’s ethical reasoning. I reviewed that book at Amazon, trying to ‘stir up a lynch mob’ for Kauffman’s thinking: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3DUQJJ2JZCAZO/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

A serious effort at Gallow’s humor? Not so fast. This isn’t funny.
At the end of the progression of political lies, you are dead, but first waterboarded perhaps. bye.

The problem arises from the way that Kant defines the categorical imperative. But the contradictions that arise remind me of set theory. We still use set theory, we must, but the contradictions there demand a larger framework.

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