Did he finish philosophy?
He never even started.
There he is. There he goes again. Look, everyone! He posted it once again! Isn't he just the funniest guy around?! Oh my God.
>>7889485
>he thinks it's a joke
>he's not been enlightened
Ahahahahahah. Oh dear. Oh dear m8.
No counter-arguments made in this thread thus far.
>>7889548
No argument was ever presented.
>>7889552
That's a question you fucking retard. Not an argument.
>>7889551
Can you read? Can you not infer from the context? Jesus, you're dense.
>>7889558
He obviously needs it explicitly laid out for him.
>>7889548
Do you need to offer one?
Theres about as much point as replying to Twitter atheists
>>7889552
sam harris fans everybody
>All the philosophy majors ITT who don't want to accept that their degree has been made redundant by Harris's advances.
Sad!
>>7889682
which advances, specifically?
>>7889686
>he has to ask
Read more Harris.
>>7889686
His insights into Free Will, moral relativism, and his destruction of religion.
To answer OP's question, no he hasn't 'finished' philosophy, he's just moved farther than anyone since Camus, and for that, he deserves better than what /lit/ and /pol/ give him.
>>7889690
>since Camus
yeah you blew it there, it was good up until that point
>>7889689
pass. if he has arguments you can post them here.
>>7889690
what are his insights? how does he destroy religion?
>>7889698
Stay unenlightened if you like then. I certainly won't enable the spoon feeding culture of the unenlightened that you are clearly entrenched in.
>>7889699
>What are his insights?
Free Will is false and Moral Relativism is false.
>How does he destroy religion?
Basically taking as many arguments from as many people, and highlighting the absurdity of religion. Watch some of his debates.
>>7889702
so he doesn't have arguments, or you haven't read them.
>>7889706
>Free Will is false and Moral Relativism is false.
these are conclusions, not arguments.
>Basically taking as many arguments from as many people, and highlighting the absurdity of religion. Watch some of his debates.
again not an argument. i'm not going to watch his debates
>>7889713
Stay ignorant, then.
>>7889706
His argument is basically that you can prove an ethical approach (basically utilitarianism) to be somehow objectively correct through empirical study of the brain, right? How does that make sense?
>>7889706
>Moral Relativism is false.
If relativism is false, and objective morality true, then it must fall upon a transcendental law, which implies a single authoritative judge. By Harris' own logic, he must admit an eternal lawmaker. I.E.-God.
>>7889709
Oh dear. See previous post until you get it. If compelled to reply, rethink. Go to his site
>>7889548
>>7889552
>>7889558
>>7889562
>>7889682
>>7889689
>>7889702
>>7889721
>>7889737
>HAHA HARRIS IS GOAT PHILOSOPHER YOU PLEBS CAN'T REFUTE HIM
>HAHA IDIOTS YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THAT I ALREADY PRESENTED HIS ARGUMENTS
>HAHA GO READ HARRIS
>HAHA STUPID IDIOTS GOD WHY DON'T YOU JUST READ HIS STUFF AND GO TO HIS WEBSITE! HE NEEDS THE MONIES!
Go to bed Sam...no one is going to buy your shitty books. You're a bad philosopher and worse person. Enjoy burning in hell faggot.
>>7889748
This is why Sam is so brilliant, he has the ability to rattle people just by remaining calm and carefully outlining his arguments.
>>7889748
How unenlightened and angry.
Is that you noam?
>b-b-but my college professor said Noam was infallible!
>>7889552
on par with the rest of his arguments desu
>>7889768
>this pedantry
Noam, it's time for your nap surely.
>>7889791
I'd certainly agree that all of harris' arguments are pedantry
>>7889806
>noam twisting what is said to mean what he wants it to
How surprising
>>7889810
A true ubermensch
Hello fellow posters.
In a rare bursting out of sincere emotion I've decided to confess that this is an ironic thread. I am OP.
Harris is not good.
Goodbye and all the best. Always.
Xxx
>>7889921
Real OP here, this is a fraud. Harris rules.
Sam Harris is one of the few writers today whom I'm certain people will be reading in 100 years.
His is the most articulate defense of secularism we've ever seen. It is not possible to be familiar with his work and also be religious.
He will be seen as one of several philosophers (Hitchens, Bertrand Russell and Witgenstein) who helped deal the final death-blow to Christian religion.
>>7889481
/thread
Why would anyone read this? He's just the flip side of the coin to some evangelical book peddler. If you're as zealously anti-religious as Ted Cruz is zealously religious, then you're identical pieces of scum.
>free will isn't real
Makes me made every damn time I hear it.
Sam Harris gets BTFO by actual philosophers. Notice how you can take the work of a real philosopher, like Aristotle or Aquinas or Nietzsche, and use it to dismantle his 'philosophical' arguments.
He should stick to neuroscience, he's out of his depth in philosophy.
>>7890066
>He will be seen as one of several philosophers (Hitchens, Bertrand Russell and Witgenstein) who helped deal the final death-blow to Christian religion.
Considering the fact that Christianity is growing, I don't see how anyone dealt a 'death-blow' to it.
>>7889466
>Presents an argument for moral secularism
>cross the "is/ought divide"
He really should stick to arguing against Islam
>>7890129
it was a troll post m8
>>7890142
He already Btfo the is/ought argument long ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtH3Q54T-M8
Skip to 1:43:00 roughly
>>7889706
Any links to a good debate?
>>7890343
>https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtH3Q54T-M8
Did you actually watch that? Harris made some embarrassing remarks that actually supported the other side of the argument ("Science can't justify science - that doesn't mean it's not scientific" - exactly the point, you epic dumbfuck). Churchland (who's slumming it) tried to clean it up, but the damage was done.
>>7890343
Not only did Harris and Krauss grossly misinterpret what the is/ought distinction is about, Churchland, as I imagine Singer and Blackburn especially did too, found it so ignorant and unacceptable that she just had to intervene and say something. This is of course of no surprise since Harris' and Krauss' formal education didn't really include symbolic logic which is key to understanding where Hume is coming from. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this is not that they fail to understand what the problem is about but that they *continuously* fail to improve their understanding of it.
Just listen to her demolition here: https://youtu.be/qtH3Q54T-M8?t=6195 (listen to what Harris says first and then watch her literally shit on his smug clueless ass)
Harris is just being Harris, a non-entity, but to listen to this insufferable and stuttering Krauss guy trying to explain things to a Hume scholar, Blackburn, as if he had a thing to learn is comedy gold.
>>7890343
>https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtH3Q54T-M8
Still watching this shitshow. Krauss is another egregious moron. OF COURSE medicine is normative, that's the whole fucking point. Any activity that dispenses advice is normative by definition. I'm as hardcore atheist as anyone, but Harris and Krauss are too stupid to breathe.
>>7890418
Also, don't open the link via the 4chan embed function. Go to the specific url manually otherwise it won't take you to the specific time.
>>7890418
You hit the nail on the head. Krauss may actually be more annoying than Harris. They both seem to think that if a normative premise is shared by the majority of the audience, then it somehow doesn't "count" as a real premise. Utterly bonkers.
>>7889690
Camus is irrelevant.
>destruction of religion
le science xDDDDDDdddDDddD
Science is unscientific and requires infinite assumptions to act upon. It's not consistent with itself.
>>7889706
>absurdity
According to what metric.
Why is this metric correct.
>Free Will is false and Moral Relativism is false.
See: above
>>7890418
>a girl dismantles the modern day übermensch
I don't even need to watch it to know its bs
>>7890418
Can you tell me the time, my device just goes to the beginning for some reason
>>7890418
"when you actually read Hume"
This is playing out like a live action comedy.
I would enjoy it more if I didn't know that these people are real, I can't stop from cringing.
>>7890530
Please
Übermensch. Nothing more, nothing less.
>>7889466
Wow that guy's ugly.
>>7891465
Don't be silly.
>>7890120
Actually, he's not even a very good scientist, having only 2 co-credits on papers to his name- less than a particularly involved undergrad is likely to have. He flaunts the degree for credibility, but he hasn't done any real science in a long time.
How come the comment sections of every shitty fucking social medium is filled with guys who are seriously convinced Dawkins and Harris are the greatest minds of our time?
>>7889706
His debate with William Lane Craig was humiliating
>Here is a list of bible events that hurt my feelings, therefore proving them false
>>7891573
Because Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris had the luck to be on the cutting edge of the single largest millennial trend. At the exact time that the newest way for kids to rebel against their religious parents became atheism, they released their low-brow books about how stupid God is and how it's cool to be an insufferable positivist. The publications were so well timed that they still have untold millions of obnoxious teenage followers.
/lit/ - Literature
>>7891573
>>7891628
I don't see the New Atheist dickriding as much as I did 2012-2014, though I see an equally annoying and perhaps more ignorant trend of "reforming society into strict secular humanism" among online communities. Annoying in that this claim fails to explain how it would differ from modern Judeo-Christian American values, and ignorant in failing to recognize that religion (in terms of function to society) is incredibly useful; the Hebrews would've died long ago without the laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
>>7889466
Having never read anything about this guy and reading this thread it looks like he fucking destroyed the asshole of every hipster on this board.
>>7890418
Wow that fucking hurt. Krauss is a fucking moron.
Harris? Who the fuck knows. He's certainly not as stupid and narrow-minded as I expected, but his over reliance on "s-st-straw man" was annoying, and the philosopher woman and lit guy got both of them pretty well at the end.
>>7891703
But this all already happened. Atheism isn't a new thing. There's a bias where people always feel they are cutting edge and that things are gradually getting better.
The existentialists and enlightenment guys did it better.
>>7891757
I agree, I just was using the term New Atheist to refer to Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins et al just to save keystrokes.
>>7891978
Is there another one?
>>7892091
That's all I got
>>7891978
>Zombie Christopher Hitchens with the power of cognitive dissonance
every fuckin time
>>7890418
>https://youtu.be/qtH3Q54T-M8?t=6195
damn. she speaks made some very legitimate arguments imo.
also, is there anyone else who finds the following argument really strange:
>science can't justify science but it does not mean it is unscientific.
wat.
>>7890418
jesus fucking christ. i don't know any of these people but how this "krauss" person up there? i'm a noob who's relatively less philosophy but it still is apparent to me how krauss has such a feeble grasp on the is/ought dichotomy.
>>7890418
>"who the heck cares what hume said because he lived in a world that knew a lot less than we"
wat. is krauss retarded?
>>7892668
He also has said that race as a biological classification doesn't exist.
>>7892696
it doesn't dipshit
>>7892696
if by that he meant that the classification is arbitrary then i don't see how that's wrong.
>>7891512
>2 co-credits on papers to his name
Hahaha holy fucking shit.
>>7892696
Variation exists. Population structure exists. The lines between "races" are arbitrary and if you take the entire genome, the average distance between a European and an African is less than the average distance between two Africans. What's more, humans left Africa recently enough that skin color and some very, VERY simple morphological differences like height and facial structure, were all that has really been able to change.
For instance, upland Kenyans do well in distance running. Kenyans at lower altitudes do no better than Americans. It's living and training at high altitudes that make them good distance runners. Take bunch of people from Jersey, have them raise their kids in the alps and make them run, and they'd be better distance runners than they would have back home.
"Race" is arbitary, even as human genetic diversity is not.
>>7893192
How many credited papers did Socrates have to his name?
What about Plato?
Are they 'Hahaha holy fucking shit'-tier?
You make me sick.
>>7891634
Literature includes philosophy, and shitting on terrible philosophers is an important part of philosophy.
>>7889466
>Hi I have autism!
>>7894169
That's alright my man. I'm not one to judge. All the best.
>>7892710
It's not arbitrary. Do a simple factor analysis on autosomal DNA and you will recover all the familiar racial classifications.
>>7894178
i meant to say that they are arbitrary on a more fundamental level.
you could divide the world betwen people with moles on their faces and those who don't.
you could divide people based on any arbitrary biological factor and it still won't justify or change its arbitrariness.
>>7893204
So you are saying that anyone who is credited with publishing papers is smarter than every single human being who lived before the time of the university?
>>7895705
No. I'm saying the things I actually said
>>7895630
this is what sociologists actually believe
>>7895630
but that's an extremely modest claim.
you can also divide people by whether they possess blood type O or blood type AB, and infact that is often a USEFUL thing to do because that distinction has SIGNFICANCE.
So a difference or a division can be either useful and significant or useless and not significant.
You can't just use a useless example like possession of moles on the face and so imply that the differences one finds between races are also insignificant.
Race for example often makes a big difference in medicine because some races are much more likely to possess certain genetic diseases meaning that a set of symptoms should be interpreted in a different way and different treatement administered in light of the information of a person's race.
So it is not a useless nor insignificant difference.
As for the distinction being arbitrary, i.e. at what ethnic group do you consider someone caucasoid, this is also not a very important complaint, because genetic distance measures can be divised which robustly show which of two populations is closest genetically to a 3rd population. So the process would be: take data from populations over the world , use almost any unsupervised learning algrothm like K nearest neighbours under the genetic distance norm, obtain the normal racial classifications of caucasoid , negroid and mongoloid which were first observed simply looking at faces, along with admixed populations like say turkic people inbetween caucasoid and mongoloid, and isolated populations like pacific islanders.
so then you obtain these robust, obvious clusters and you ask "well how do we decide whether ugyurs are white or not?"
and sure, that is arbitrary, but it is arbitrary in the way that "largeness" of a natural number is arbitrary. Some may say that 100 is a large natural number, and some may say, not it isn't, 2000 is a large natural number, and that is arbitrary, but what is not arbitrary is that 2000 is definitely larger than 100, and just like no one can deny that greeks are genetically closer to franks than ugyurs are.
So saying "races don't exist" is very vague. when you ask specific questions about human ethnic groups and populations, you find they exist robustly, are useful and significant, and are only arbitrary in a limited sense.
>>7896106
thanks for the reply. I think I was a bit wrong on exactly how arbitrary race is as a biological distinction.
given this information that you just presented to me, how did harris justify his claim of race being an arbitrary biological distinction? because if certain races are more likely to possess certain genetic diseases then it very evidently and clearly shows that it does hold biological significance.
>>7896284
the arbitrariness he probably has in mind is when one person says "syrians are white" and another person says " no syrians aren't white".
and sure it is arbbitrary where we draw teh line, especially since white is not the same as caucasoid. caucasoid as a cluster you can make a compelling argument for redefining as being a non-arbitrary, robust cluster which happens to perfectly match the 19th-century , unscientific study of facial features. However white is always going to be a more layman, cultural term.
the important thing to realise that saying "race is arbitrary" is strictly speaking actually not making a statement about the populations genetics and average differences between different ethnic groups. It merely appears as though it is.
So it's not wrong, but it's not saying anything very important either. As I said here >>7896106 it is a very modest claim. Ethnic groups and races and the differences between their allele (which is a version of a gene) distributions and the resulting mean differences between them remain significant , medically and otherwise.
And the reason Sam Harris and other biologists and geneticists say "race is arbitrary" or even worse, even more vague statements like "races don't exist" even they know full well about he medical and genetic significance, is because they're politically motivated. They're politically motivated either just because they don't want to get blacklisted or because they have sincere left wing beliefs that they should spread the message that everyone is equal even if that isn't true.
>Sam harris thread
>replies into triple digits
>every time
He truly is the Socrates of his time. It's a mixture of people who have accepted and understood that he's shaken philosophy and life for all time and those who can't stand it and lash out.
Guaranteed controversy.
The sad thing is this misunderstood genius would probably be sent to drink the hemlock if judged by the ignorant masses today.
One day society'll catch up... One day.
>>7893204
How we do we expect them to be credited with papers before they existed? It's important for Sam Harris because it calls into doubt his expertise on the subject. He has the most simple and easy to obtain philosophy degree, the sort that is so simple you will be flipping burgers if that's all you have. While he does have a PhD in neurology (which a lack of papers isn't going to make less impressive) the fact that he doesn't publish, and that the amount of work he did on those two papers is dubious just suggests a standoffish attitude towards academia. Also even his PhD has some weird stuff going on with it.
https://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/neuroscientist-sam-harris/
>>7896500
>ignorant masses today.
So actual philosophers then? Name me a single philosopher who admires Harris.
>>7896682
He doesn't have to converse with academia. It's stale and mired in confusion and will lead only to squabblings dealing with misreadings of the great man.
At the end of the day you either get it or you don't and academics are so indoctrinated that they refuse to see the answers when this once in a generation genius gives them.
>>7896687
There are a whole host of famous (albeit inferior to Sam) philosophers who were not respected, even derided in their time. That's the point. He's ahead of the times
