Sam Harris’ new book “Waking Up” doesn’t merely cover meditation and drugs, or spirituality without religion. Many here will reduce it to that. It also, to my mind, articulates the problem of consciousness in a fresh way. This matters to us. Those of us who have followed the plot line from Thales on down, Socrates via Plato, Des Cartes, Spinoza, Kant, thru Husserl, Wittgenstein…eastern philosophy, and Colin McGinn saying nobody will ever understand consciousness, from our frustration that AI scientists constantly say nobody really understands consciousness, finally it may be that l’il old Sam Harris has cracked it open. I’m not an academic or an authority, but while reading Waking Up I came across a few passages that seem different than anything I’ve read, and pushed me closer to the precipice of glimpsing a sliver of understanding what consciousness is, or more accurately, isn’t.
I feel, from an intellectual standpoint, Sam Harris is the most important person living today. He is a philosopher and neuroscientist, and perhaps the most articulate and focused person to grace this planet. His limits seem to be the limits of the English language, and the limits of patience of those who hear him out. He talks about controversial stuff involving religion, but he’s underrated as a philosopher. Free Will, and now Consciousness, he is perhaps the Carl Sagan of philosophy, but more than that, he has a social call to action, namely that we do our best to bravely speak out against stupid, narcissistic and morally repugnant ideas wherever we find them. Also, to Wake Up, experience life and consciousness, and understanding and connection, and achieve greater happiness. He’s what we’d all want to be. A popular thinker who combines philosophy and science without the dispassion that usually goes with such disciplines, I hope he continues to walk the walk and talk the talk. As he once said to me early on, via email, before he was famous: “that’s all we can do.”
So does he review the arguments about consciousness historically as you have framed it?
Or is the book more like a new enlightenment sermon?
I feel the problem of consciousness is more profound that we take it to be, and is actually an extension of the entire problem of inductive causality.
I was struck by this whilst reading Hume. In brief:
When a bililard ball hits another there is nothing whatever about that event that a priori leads us to understand the effect.
All of our understanding of the world, and all science ultimately relies wholly on the observation of what comes next, recording that, and seeing if it happens again the same way.
Apriori we cannot predict if two colliding balls cause them to break apart, bounce, transfer movement from the moving one to the still one, or to transform into a bowl of petunias. We can only rely on what we see, and the constant conjunction of similar events to build our ‘laws of nature’. But underlying that we can only describe in ever more fine detail.
To effect that description we can only use metaphors, comparisons with other empirically observed facts we have collect about the world.
For example the blood was once described as an irrigation system. When pumps were invented we were able to use the pump analogy to describe the heart. For the brain we have moved from the L’Homme Machine, to the calculating device, to the modern computer.
Description with metaphor upon description with metaphor is all we can do. Consciousness being so close to us, we have no other thing to compare it with, no alternative metaphor; or what we have seems inadequate.
We are no closer to a fundamental understanding of why it is that two billiard balls act as they do, that we can know the underlying truth of consciousness. The only real difference is that consciousness is personal, and we think we ought to have it nailed down being so close to it. All we can ever really do is to say that living grey-matter in a healthy body does such and such; ultimately this is the same as describing what two billiard balls do on green baise. We can keep asking why, why, why; we can extend our description, but in the end all we have is description. And the only explanation we have is when that description is detailed enough to look like explanation.
We find comparing the heart to a pump satisfactory, but is it? Surely this is equally inadequate to the brain as computer?
Sanjay, would you care to elaborate on why you think this way of Sam Harris? You seem like a man of intellect and grace. Or join me in the new thread “What happened there…”
I think that Ben Affleck is correct in his statements about Harris. Harris has racist and stereotypical ideas about Islam. That doesn’t mean that Harris is wrong in everything he says but one has to take it with a grain of salt. theguardian.com/film/2014/oc … lam-racist
“We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where criticism of the religion gets conflated with bigotry towards Muslims as people. It’s intellectually ridiculous.”
Immediate response:
Ben Affleck:
“Hold on — are you the person who officially understands the codified doctrine of Islam? It’s gross and racist. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shifty Jew!’ Your argument is, ‘You know, black people, they shoot each other.’”
No Ben, it’s actually NOTHING like that, whatsoever. That’s not even close to Sam Harris’ argument. It’s not even on the foothills of the subject. If Harris said: Islamic people are by nature murderous zealots, that would have been closer. But Harris simply meant that the second you criticize an Islamic idea (like murdering adulterers with stones) you get labeled as a racist by knee jerk liberals with poor critical thinking skills. Like, for instance, Affleck. It’s scary b/c Affleck is supposed to be a voice of a generation, making important films like Argo, and becoming the next celebrity politician, like Arnold or Reagan. But he’s hamfisted like this, he reminds me of some dumb ass friend I lift weights with. The kind of people who force me to come here to find people who can actually think with opposable thumbs.
Ben’s response was so out of left field, it’s like trying to argue with my wife on a heavy flow day. And b/c he’s this big charismatic actor, his bullshit is backed by all this Affleck leading-man energy that could actually fool people. And the worst part is this inane attention-hoarding bullshit wasted the whole segment, and we didn’t get to hear what Sam really came to say, which I’m sure was way better than Argo or Gone Girl.
I can certainly elaborate but the more important issue is who is competent enough to understand that and deciding authority whether what is right or wrong?
Affleck is about as charismatic as a two days old dog turd. I just watched this movie, The Town, decent movie but Affleck sucked as usually. And he’ll ruin Batman vs Superman too, seriously, who decided to cast that sad clown as Batman.
/rant off
I just love these labels such as “racist” and “bigot”. It’s racist to point out that black people on average have a lower IQ than white people. It’s not racist to point out that white people on average have a lower IQ than Asians. It’s also not racist to point out that blacks on average have bigger cocks than whites.
It’s ok to misrepresent atheism, insult atheists and stone them to death as long as it’s commanded by your religion, after all, people are free to practice their religion. Having an opinion that perhaps stoning people to death is morally wrong is an obvious example of bigotry, unless you call it a “religious belief” instead of an opinion, then it becomes valid and criticizing it becomes bigotry.
I rather like Affleck as an actor and I’m glad he’s throwing his hat in the ring on an intellectual level. Maybe he’ll take his licks and come out smarter for it. I think his intentions are probably good. I’m a creature where my ideas about the world far outpace my courage & ability to talk publicly or act. It’s refreshing to see someone who is the other way around. He has a better chance at making a difference than we do. I can remember some fallacies I used to hold dear, let’s hope Affleck is on a journey and is actually a seeker, not afraid to grow. (He has demonstrated as much, let’s be fair. He is not afraid to grow. Look at how much he has accomplished.) I hope he responds soon to what happened, like Harris did. Let’s not be guilty of judging a human being as a soundbite versus a process.
Zinnat, I don’t know your deal buddy. You seem a bit stuffy and beatific at this point. You call Sam Harris an idiot by proxy, without sullying your own tongue. That is a kind of false refinement. By your own actions, you deem yourself qualified to say whether someone is a putz. You also say that you have an eye for finding someone who is not a putz. And then you say we don’t have the ability to decree who is a putz and why. I’m not really sure where you stand, compared to the way you stand, the way you pose in your stance.
Why do you think Sam Harris is a putz? And by this I mean a putz compared to the general putz-like nature of all of us mortals. Sam Harris is human and his limits of perception are going to be flawed. That’s why I said “who isn’t?”
If you can’t usher an opinion and get your hands dirty, because you are too wise and full of proverbs then go write poetry. This is a discussion forum.