I agree somewhat. Chomsky was about facts, but Harris was NOT about feelings, but rather about the concept of morality itself.
There are two questions:
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Can there exist a difference in the moral level of a given atrocity? (Harris)
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WAS there a difference in the moral level of these atrocities? (Chomsky)
NEITHER PARTY stayed neatly in either box. Both fucked up. Let’s start with Harris: while he is more interested in the former question, he is guilty of answering number 1 while simultaneously cherry-picking assumptions about number 2. He’s surely interested in both questions, but he can swing back and forth. His folly is in going back and forth in a slapdash manner, in other words, presuming we all agree on the facts.
Perhaps realizing he was doing this, he at least made an attempt to take it somewhere neutral, with an example hypothetical, to begin by establishing #1 – AND THATS WHAT GOOD DISCOURSE IS ALL ABOUT. Point for Sam.
Chomsky is guilty of precisely the opposite. He attempts to answer number 1 ONLY by focusing on number 2…as if number 2 alone could help us answer number 1. So in a way, they are both guilty of the same thing – presuming we all agree on the facts. you might argue that the answer to number 2 automatically by definition answers the question to number 1. Here’s my problem with that:
Eventually you will come to a point where we agree on facts. At that point, we have to have a clear agreement on number 1, i.e. that it’s not always JUST about body count. Sam is asking Chomsky if he believes it’s all about body count only, because Chomsky has caused Sam to infer this. Chomsky instead of saying yes or no, is skipping ahead to showing the moral inferiority of America. He’s refusing to dance with Harris, in a way that I as the reader would have been able to follow. He might have said: “No i’m not meaning to imply it’s always only about body count. What I’m saying is there are facts around this that make me feel the moral issues aren’t so cut and dry. Sam, you seem to be taking certain facts as a given, and i think this is your bias, whereas I believe America’s moral position is just as shaky if not more shaky, and here’s why…”
It struck me as odd that he would say “Sam your example is nothing like reality.” Hypotheticals aren’t supposed to be like reality, they are good because of the stark separateness and contrast from reality, in order to find an axiom without having to sift through nuances. In this case the axiom was a sadistic mass murdered is morally worse than a guy killing in self defense, or utility. The issue wasn’t whether this was a good analogy. It was an example of an axiom at play. Once established, we could then move on to see if it could in theory apply, assuming the facts sussed out. but Chomsky, who is a very big boy, was guilty of a fallacy, here, by pointing out the problem with the analogy. More than one fallacy, by adding ad hom to the mix.
The way it needs to happen is both parties must agree that yes, there is such a thing as a moral high ground. Then they need to go about the messy business of figuring out who has it. Chomsky thinks he’s privy to facts that support his arguments, Harris has different facts he’s using. It all comes down to which facts you’re using. This is not a discussion of moral equivalence, or at least it shouldn’t have been. Chomsky might have said it just like that, if he wasn’t such a dick, and Harris probably would have understood, and they would have gone back and forth about the facts, but BOTH PLAYING BY THE SAME RULES.
“We now on a regular basis engage in torture” is an example of a mealy-mouthed example of a fact. Whether it’s true or not shouldn’t be relevant YET. But when it’s time to establish facts, THEN we can talk about the epistemology of such things, or at least address the problem of figuring out what actually happens in reality and how much and under what circumstances and colored in what way, and how to deal with that problem. After all, we lack an omniscient judge (or currently, any judge) to help us in these matters. And that last fact argues well for BOTH parties to chill out, not just Sam.
If you agree with the FACTS chomsky seems to believe, you will automatically side with chomsky here. But whether or not it SHUOLD have been, this discourse was never about facts, but rather about the concept of moral equivalence.
Any child can intuit the ethics of good guys, bad guys, killing in self defense or utilitarianism, versus killing for religious reasons or blood lust. Harris’s mistake is presuming we’ve already agreed on the WHY of the killing. Chomsky’s flaw, in this debate at least, is failing to validate Sam’s (and all of our) concept of moral equivalence in theory.
In sum, whether you feel it useful or not (i do) Chomsky was invited by Harris to validate the theory and then demonstrate how that theory doesn’t apply in this case. But he didn’t do that for whatever reason.
All of you piling on Harris are making a similar mistake – you’re using facts as you argument. Facts are great, but facts are also very difficult to work with. There’s a time and place to work with facts, but first we have to agree to the rules of how we use facts. The rules are what sam was talking about, not the facts.
What really struck me is that both men should know better. And yet, they both feel into the same traps we fall into here.