Book Review: The End of Faith, by Sam Harris
Note: I have issued a partial retraction to this review.
A Book with Broad Media Exposure
Some time ago, I returned from work one evening and, as I often do,
tuned in to Fox News. That particular evening, I saw something at once
slightly comical, a little surreal, and very important. Sam Harris, a
man who, to my eye anyway, resembles the comedic actor Ben Stiller,
was being interviewed about a book called The End of Faith: Religion,
Terror, and the Future of Reason . I remember very little about the
interview itself now. What I do recall is my utter astonishment at the
sorts of fundamental questions Harris was raising about religion on
national television, and on a conservative network to boot. I was
astounded. This book had the potential to either very good or very
bad. Regardless, because the book clearly sought to examine the role
of religion in fomenting terrorism, it certainly had the potential to
be, for good or ill, a very important book. Furthermore, the fact that
Fox News was interviewing its author indicated that the book would
likely not remain obscure for long. (Indeed, the author has had other
national exposure.) Based on these things, as well as the fact that
Harris made some excellent points in his interview, I decided to read
the book and see for myself.
A Mixed Bag Worth Rummaging Through
In my experience with books like this that attempt to tackle major
issues, I have usually been either extremely pleased or displeased,
and this evaluation has lasted from cover to cover. This book was an
interesting exception. Harris did deliver on his promise to ask hard
questions about religion, but the book never really got off the
ground. Having said that, the book was not a serious disappointment,
either. As I stated some time ago, one of my greatest concerns about
the book is that it would "champion some new version of revealed truth
as a means of knowledge. [The book] would then end up aiding religion
while appearing to champion reason." While the book did advocate
certain methods from Eastern mysticism, it did so in an unpersuasive
and muddled way. Thus my greatest fear went substantially unrealized.
How could this be? How does one start out coldly examining the tenets
and history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but end up espousing
a woozy mixture of reason, "empirical" exploration, altruism, and
Eastern spirituality? One clue that quickly becomes apparent to many
readers, is that the book is somewhat rambling and poorly organized.
For example, I can summarize the main point of his book in one
sentence as follows: "Since man acts upon the philosophical principles
he holds (sometimes with fatal consequences to himself and others), we
can not afford to withhold our moral judgment from those who accept
such guidance on faith." But I never got this in any one place in the
book. Instead, the reader will find the two halves of this stated
repeatedly in various parts of the book, especially in the first
chapter, where Harris seems to be trying to make his main point. For
example: (1) "A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost
everything else in a person's life." (p. 12), and (2) "It is
imperative that we begin speaking plainly about the absurdity of most
of our religious beliefs" (p. 48).
This lack of focus is a symptom of a broader problem that causes the
book as a whole to suffer: Harris does not appear to possess a
systematic philosophy. My general impression is that Harris is an
implicitly rational man grappling with the major problem (a hostile
Moslem army of medieval savages with access to modern weapons) of his
age, but that he is also, unfortunately, too much a product of his
times. As such, he is also explicitly an altruist and has absorbed
many of the philosophical premises one might expect from someone who
hails from the Academy of our day. The book ends up being something
like a roller-coaster going nowhere. One moment, Harris seems on the
verge of making a major insight. But he does not, to the frustration
of the reader. The next, he seems about to make some monstrous
concession to nihilism or religion. Again, he does not, to the
reader's relief. Overall, the book has little new, philosophically, to
offer its readers. However, it remains an important book for several
reasons. First, the book brings some important questions about the
epistemology of religion to the public discourse. Second, the book
provides a frank look at religious tenets from several Western
traditions throughout history. Given the widespread ignorance about
religion in our own modern culture, even (or especially) on the part
of the religious, it is crucial that the public become familiar with
the full extent of the barbarity contained in religious texts. Third,
the book examines the historical consequences of religious beliefs
being widely and fervently enough held that they can be put into
practice. Fourth, the philosophical deficiencies of the book are
undercut by its main thesis. As such, it is worth knowing what they
are. In this way, the better-informed intellectuals from my readership
will know whether they might wish to address these issues themselves.
I will discuss each of these points in turn for most of the rest of
this review.
Faith as a Means of Knowledge
Though I intend to discuss some of the philosophical deficiencies of
this book in more detail later, it is impossible to begin discussing
this book in any meaningful way without touching upon the hierarchical
nature of philosophic concepts. This book is clearly intended to be an
indictment of beliefs accepted on faith. But faith is an
epistemological concept. That is, it is one way of answering the
question, "How do we know what we know?" A grave weakness of this book
is that it neither summarizes nor points its reader to an adequate
defense of reason as a means of gaining valid knowledge. Rather, the
book seems to either assume that the reader agrees with the validity
of reason, that no such validation is necessary, or worst, that no
such validation is possible. As a result, the book is vulnerable to
the charge that its author is asking us to accept -- on faith -- the
validity of reason! As I have already said, the book is quite sloppy
philosophically, and as a consequence, the book is permeated with
undefended assumptions, which I will have to point out from time to
time.
Assuming the validity of reason as a means of acquiring knowledge, as
most of the American adults in the target audience more or less would,
the first chapter makes many interesting and mostly valuable points,
though there are also grave errors. First, Harris echoes the lifelong
message of Ayn Rand in illustrating the truth of the proposition that
ideas are important: men base their actions on what they hold to be
true. Given the propensity of our media to attribute the atrocities of
September 11, 2001 to almost anything but the beliefs of the
terrorists (or even in the case of Reuters, to pass moral judgment on
them), it is crucial to reestablish this connection. This is indeed
the most important point of this book. If the book achieves nothing
else, it will have done a great service in making people cognizant of
the importance of ideas as movers of history. Harris makes some other
valid and interesting, though derivative, points. His discussion of
religious "moderation" in a section of the first chapter will be a
challenge to any moderately religious reader and a clarion call for
the rest. His basic question for religious moderates is: "How do you
know what to keep and what to discard?"
[W]e must decide what it means to be a religious "moderate" in the
twenty-first century. Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely
interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of
living in the modern world. ... [T]he moderate's retreat from
scriptural literalism ... draws its inspiration not from scripture but
from cultural developments that have rendered many of God's utterances
difficult to accept as written. In America, religious moderation is
further enforced by the fact that most Christians and Jews do not read
the Bible in its entirety and consequently have no idea just how
vigorously ... God ... wants heresy expunged. (pp. 17-18)
Harris then quotes a Biblical passage (Deuteronomy 13:7-11) that
explicitly calls for believers to slay anyone who would "... divert
you from Yahweh your God...." He further rightly points out that
religious moderation "offers no bulwark against religious extremism"
(p.20) because religious moderates "betray faith and reason equally"
(p.21). He points out that religious knowledge, unlike fields of
rational inquiry, admits of no progress. (This is interesting and
true, but again, not a valid philosophical argument against the
epistemology of faith.) On one point, that religious dogmas about
death and the afterlife are essential to the influence of religious
belief, Harris makes what sounds on its face like a good argument, but
which is not. He ends by saying that, "Without death, the influence of
faith-based religion would be unthinkable." While it is certainly true
that, say, the perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities in New York
and Washington believed that they'd be going to paradise, is it really
necessary for an ethical system to posit an afterlife to cause men to
act irrationally? What of the Communists and the Nazis? Communism and
socialism, while not traditional religions, provide counterexamples of
secular religions which led to barbarism and death, but which did not
offer "pie in the sky when you die" to their adherents. (Harris
discusses the Holocaust later on in the book, but does not address
this issue.) Harris then goes on to make the first of several calls
for something he alternately calls "mysticism" and "spirituality."
[T]here is little doubt that a certain range of human experience can
be appropriately described as "spiritual" or "mystical" -- experiences
of meaningfulness, selflessness, and heightened emotion that surpass
our narrow identities as "selves" [emphasis added] and escape our
current understanding of the mind and brain. But nothing about these
experiences justifies arrogant and exclusionary claims about the
unique sanctity of any text. There is no reason that our ability to
sustain ourselves emotionally and spiritually cannot evolve with
technology, politics, and the rest of culture. (pp. 39-40)
Thus Harris ends a chapter that begins with a probing and
uncompromising examination of faith with a non sequitur about the
importance of fear of death and a call for "mysticism" that, we will
see, he doesn't ask us to examine too closely.
Kant Lite
I do not know much about Eastern mysticism. However, I suspect that
Harris's non sequitur about the importance of fear of death and his
characterization of mystical experiences above and elsewhere as
"selfless" (or unified with the universe) are his way of addressing
the "problem" posed by death: deny that you're really an individual.
This is made easy to do when the essential question of "What is man?"
is glossed over. A strict, hierarchical approach to philosophic
questions however, would require that we determine what we are before
determining what we should do. In other words, how the hell does
Harris know that we are not individuals? (As he asserts by using scare
quotes around the word "selves" above.) No answer. How does he know
these experiences provide valid knowledge? He mentions that science is
beginning to investigate the kinds of experiences he is alluding to,
but science is derived from a specific philosophical perspective on
the world and how knowledge is acquired. Any gains from these studies
will merely add to already validated scientific knowledge about our
minds. And how do we even begin to "sustain ourselves emotionally"
without a firm grasp of what an emotion is? If Ayn Rand is correct, an
emotion is a nearly instantaneous evaluation of one's surroundings
based on one's value system which is felt as a percept. If this is
true, an emotion -- "heightened" or otherwise -- tells one nothing
about himself without some degree of self-knowledge or introspection.
But I belabor the point. And, besides, the epistemological meltdown
has just begun.
In one sense, Harris does exactly what I feared he might in that he
does, in fact, attempt to sell his readers on the notion of some
nonrational means of knowledge. He does even more than this, though.
He essentially discounts the validity of reason. Harris echoes an
argument posed by Immanuel Kant by dressing it in pseudoscientifc
garb. As Ayn Rand formulated the argument in For the New Intellectual:
[Kant's] argument amounted to a negation, not only of man's
consciousness, but of any consciousness, of consciousness as such. His
argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a
consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means
and no others, therefore, his consciousness is not valid; man is
blind, because he has eyes -- deaf, because he has ears -- deluded,
because he has a mind -- and the things he perceives do not exist,
because he perceives them. (p. 30)
So how does Harris (who is, like myself, a neurobiologist) make this
argument sound scientific? How, that is, does he appeal to our minds
to make them believe that they are not really grasping reality?
The claims of mystics are neurologically quite astute. No human being
has ever experienced an objective world, or even a world at all. You
are, at the moment, having a visionary experience. The world that you
see and hear is nothing more than a modification of your
consciousness, the physical status of which remains a mystery. Your
nervous system sections the undifferentiated buzz of the universe into
separate channels of sight, sound, taste, and touch, as well as other
senses of lesser renown -- proprioception, kinesthesia,
enteroreception, and even echolocation. The sights and sounds and
pulsings that you experience at this moment are like different spectra
of light thrown forth by the prism of your brain. We really are such
stuff as dreams are made of. ... [N]othing arises in consciousness
that has not first been structured, edited, or amplified by the
nervous system. ... [T]his gives rise to a few philosophical problems
concerning the foundations of our knowledge.... (p. 41)
How does Sam Harris know with such certainty that "no human being has
ever experienced an objective world?" No answer. I do not intend to
present Ayn Rand's full theory of epistemology here to rebut Sam
Harris. Besides, she and her student Leonard Peikoff have already done
a much better job of that than I ever could. At this point, I think it
sufficient simply to state that as a scientist who understands
Harris's gratuitous jargon perfectly well, that he is either trying to
pull the wool over our eyes or actually believes that our grasp of the
world is shaky at best. I suspect the latter. Harris is so
disorganized philosophically, and his views so commonplace, that it
would be easy to attribute nearly the whole of his set of beliefs to
his having picked them up fairly uncritically from others. (Though his
extensive notes and bibliography might make that tough to defend.)
Furthermore, though Harris presents this Kantesque formulation and
continues advocating "mysticism" later in the book, he succeeds in
doing very little damage in doing so. First, these are notions with
such common currency, that they will likely have been accepted or
rejected already by any educated reader. Second, Harris fails to make
a very convincing case against the validity of the mind or for
adopting Eastern mysticism. (In fact, it's hard to see what, exactly,
we are to accomplish via the latter in any case.) Finally, the central
points of the book -- that ideas are important and thus should not be
accepted on faith -- serve to undercut the very bad ideas Harris holds
and wants us to adopt! Not to exaggerate the importance of this book,
but so it was with Aristotle: though he made many errors, his rational
methodology enabled later generations to recover from them. This is
why, though I have objected lengthily already to some of the ideas in
Harris's book, I still regard it as beneficial in the main.
Taking Altruism on Faith OK?
The second chapter consists of Harris's ruminations on "the nature of
belief." It is here that he develops further his idea that belief is a
guide to action. More importantly, he marshals his arguments against
accepting beliefs based on faith. He makes several damning indictments
of faith that will appeal to most readers who respect reason. This
chapter, infuriatingly, almost ends strongly. I would have liked it to
end on this quote.
What about our much championed freedom of religious belief? It is no
different from our freedoms of journalistic and biological belief --
and anyone who believes that the media are perpetrating a great fire
conspiracy, or that molecular biology is just a theory that may prove
totally wrong, has merely exercised his freedom to be thought a fool.
Religious unreason should acquire an even greater stigma in our
discourse, given that it remains among the principle causes of armed
conflict in the world. Before you can get to the end of this
paragraph, another person will probably die because of what someone
else believes about God. Perhaps it is time we demanded that our
fellow human beings had better reasons for maintaining their religious
differences, if such reasons even exist. (pp. 77-78)
Unfortunately, just as Harris ends the first chapter with a major
epistemological error, he ends this one with an ethical one, by
praising altruism. "But there are far better reasons for
self-sacrifice than those that religion provides" (p. 78). As Harris
has spent the whole chapter discussing belief, one can't help but
wonder, "How does Harris 'know' that there is even a single 'good'
reason to commit self-sacrifice?" He does not. We have here yet
another example of a common belief -- that morality equals
self-sacrifice -- that Harris has accepted, but failed to address pro
or con, or apparently, even to think about at all. Nonetheless, the
larger point of this chapter makes reading it worthwhile.
The Historical Consequences of Faith
Much of the rest of the book does a great service to mankind by
cataloging some of the more ridiculous things people have believed on
faith and the consequences that have been felt through history
whenever faith has had the upper hand in society. Although the book
takes Islamofascist terrorism as its point of departure, Christianity
and Judaism are not spared its critical eye. This is important in that
a focus on Islam alone would too easily allow the Christians in our
country to see our modern crisis incorrectly as a sectarian conflict
rather than as a direct consequence of the divorce from reason that is
religion as such. Furthermore, it is important that our Christians,
believing in a highly attenuated version of Christianity and without
anything like medieval (or Moslem) fervency, grasp the essence of what
they really are advocating. In this respect, Sam Harris does an
admirable job of preventing Christians from evading what their
professed beliefs would really mean when put into practice. As I have
stated earlier, Harris seems to be implicitly rational. I will add
that he errs on the side of empiricism, but that in this case, it is a
felicitous error. The many and detailed examples here help drive the
point home. Harris successively describes in detail the following
Christian horrors: the Inquisition, the persecution of witches and
Jews, and the complicity of the Roman Catholic Church in the
Holocaust. He then devotes a half a chapter to the medieval nature of
modern-day Islam. The barbarity listed here is so extensive it
sometimes becomes tedious. Some highlights: numerous exhortations to
Moslem men to "defend" the faith via armed conflict; a list (by place
and year) of 51 massacres of Jews within the Arab world; five pages of
quotations from the Koran (in order of appearance) where unbelievers
are vilified; and polling data from all over the Moslem world
indicating that, at least, 20% (in relatively secular Turkey) of the
general public in any given Moslem nation say that suicide bombing in
"defense" of Islam is justifiable. After this chapter, he devotes a
chapter to the less-than-benign influence of Christianity on
modern-day America. Harris provides a few illuminating quotes from
government officials, discusses the exorbitant cost of enforcing drug
laws, and touches on the threat posed by Christians to embryonic stem
cell research.
But if Harris does a good job showing the ramifications of religious
belief put into practice, he does a poor one suggesting how to dodge
the scimitar it wields today. As he has implicitly rational, but
explicitly mixed epistemological premises, he likewise implicitly
favors survival, but explicitly gives the moral high ground to
pacifists, consistent with someone who seems to have absorbed many of
his ideas from the dominant intellectual culture.
What will we do if an Islamist regime ... ever acquires long-range
nuclear weaponry? ... In such a situation, the only thing likely to
ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless
to say, this would be an unthinkable crime [emphasis added]-- as it
would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day --
but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what
the Islamists believe. (p. 129)
If it isn't a crime to kill, in self-defense, an individual pointing a
gun at you, neither is it be a crime for us to launch a first strike
in the situation described above. Every death would lie on the
shoulders of the Islamists and those who armed them. But Harris is so
crippled by altruism that he can scarcely rise to the defense of his
own life! In fact, Harris's altruism permeates the second half of the
chapter called "The Problem with Islam" (where he lists the many
barbarities of Islam as indicated above). As a result he ends up
wasting considerable time manufacturing a convoluted argument (the
"perfect weapon") for America's self-defense after first conceding
every major premise (and then some) to, of all people, Noam Chomsky!
This is a man who has worked tirelessly for decades to tar the United
States as a global villain. How does Harris describe Chomsky? "He
appears to be an exquisitely moral man whose political views prevent
him from making the most basic moral distinctions -- between types of
violence, and the variety of human purposes that give rise to them"
(139). For a through debunking of Chomsky's political views and
academic reputation, refer to The Anti-Chomsky Reader , edited by
Peter Collier and David Horowitz. Suffice it to say, that some of the
worst damage Sam Harris's book could possibly inflict on our national
discourse about the war would be through setting up a figure such as
Chomsky as a moral authority. Again, though, most educated readers
already have formed an opinion on Chomsky or will at least have
already encountered the substance of his ravings in comic-book form
through their familiarity with Michael Moore.
Harris continues his infuriating ethical hobble in the penultimate
chapter, "A Science of Good and Evil." As he does in much of the book,
he makes a succession of good and bad points in no particular order.
Fortunately, he makes his best point immediately at the start of the
chapter. In fact, it is such a fundamentally good point that it
salvages the remainder of the chapter by inviting criticism. To wit:
Many people appear to believe that ethical truths are culturally
contingent in a way that scientific truths are not. Indeed this loss
of purchase on ethical truth seems to be one of the principle
shortcomings of secularism. The problem is that once we abandon our
belief in a rule-making God, the question of why a given action is
good or bad becomes a matter of debate. And a statement like "Murder
is wrong," while being uncontroversial in most circles, has never
seemed anchored to the facts of this world in the way that statements
about planets or molecule appear to be. The problem, in philosophical
terms, has been one of characterizing just what sorts of "facts" our
moral intuitions can be said to track -- if, indeed, they track
anything of the kind. (p. 170)
His basic point is that ethics can be approached with reference to the
facts of reality. Never mind that he earlier calls into question the
ability of the human mind to grasp objective reality. Never mind that
he spends a lot of time trying, in turn, to base ethics on the
"happiness and suffering of sentient creatures," or on "intuition," or
on "moral communities" -- in short, on anything but what we are and
what we must do to survive. If we consider the latter two things and
approach questions of morality with the proper methodology, we will
reach the correct answers. As with the rest of the book, Harris
presents an idea whose time has come, but goes nowhere in particular
with it. Though Harris develops further ethical arguments in this
chapter, it will suffice to say that they are convoluted, somewhat
tedious, and for the most part, easily avoidable through a more
systematic approach to philosophy. In addition to being an altruist,
Harris, incidentally, is also a determinist. Since this position, his
assertion to the contrary, directly contradicts the notion of ethical
accountability, I will present here the counterargument to determinism
as articulated by Leonard Peikoff in Objectivism: The Philosophy of
Ayn Rand.
If man's consciousness were automatic, if it did react
deterministically to outer or inner forces acting upon it, then, by
definition, a man would have no choice in regard to his mental
content; he would accept whatever he had to accept, whatever ideas the
determining forces engendered in him. In such a case, one could not
prescribe methods to guide a man's thought or ask him to justify his
ideas; the subject of epistemology would be inapplicable. One cannot
ask a person to alter or justify the mentally inescapable, any more
than, in physical terms, one can ask him to alter or justify his
pattelar reflex. In regard to the involuntary, there is no alternative
but to submit -- to do what one must, whatever that is. (pp. 69-70)
Free will is a philosophic axiom, and as such, any attempt to argue
against it will result in self-contradiction. In this case, the
determinist, as such, would essentially be squawking like a parrot.
Having no choice as to the content of his mind, he will be unable to
evaluate it. According to his own position, he will be unable to know
whether what he is saying -- like an argument in favor of determinism
-- is true or false.
Billions and Billions of "Selves"
We finally reach the last chapter, where Sam Harris revisits the idea
of "mysticism," a term which he strangely chooses over "spirituality"
because he somehow regards it as having -- I am not making this up --
more "gravitas." Thus culminates in stupidity a book that began on
such a promising note. I risk sounding overly harsh to a man who has
done us all a great service by asking some very important questions
and by bringing up some very important historical facts. Nevertheless,
I have a point. I think that Harris means well by offering the
meditative techniques of Eastern mysticism to us as a method of
attaining enlightenment and of spiritual sustenance. However, I not
only have numerous major issues with many of the other points he has
already raised in this book, I take issue with this suggestion as
well. As do hallucinogenic drugs, meditation may indeed offer, under a
carefully controlled program of scientific study, some insights on how
the mind works. It also undoubtedly provides many with a way to relax.
But the suggestion that we are not, in fact, separate entities, based
on some out-of-context scientific facts and on certain states achieved
during meditation, is ludicrous. It is also precisely the kind of
absurd result that can -- and almost always will -- be achieved when
philosophy is approached in an unfocused, undisciplined manner. One of
the subheadings for this chapter sums up the problem nicely: "What are
we calling 'I'?" Throughout much of this book, Harris has built
ethical arguments. These are arguments concerning how human beings
should act. Should we not be clear on the question of what, exactly, a
human being is before we start telling him what to do? (And should he
listen to us if we give him orders or lousy arguments?) At the risk of
sounding like a broken record, Eastern mysticism is not an idea that
is either especially new to most readers or compellingly-enough
presented for the book to become a significant source for the spread
of bad ideas. For this reason, the final chapter will probably seem to
most readers like an interesting, Carl Saganesque bit of wonderment
about the amazing universe we all reside in, and nothing more.
Conclusion
The End of Faith is an important book whose lack of philosophical
focus hinders itself from greatness. The principle virtues of the book
are twofold. First, the book brings to the general public discourse
the following four propositions. (1) That ideas guide man's actions,
which can include unprovoked mass murder. (2) That faith as a means of
gaining knowledge is invalid. (3) That we can therefore no longer
afford to withhold moral condemnation of those who indulge in faith.
(4) Furthermore, areas of knowledge once regarded as within the
provenance of faith can and should be discussed just as rationally as
any science. Second, the book details what life "guided" by faith
really is like by examining the history of the West as well as the
current situation in the Moslem world. By posing the questions he does
in the relevant context, Sam Harris succeeds in shifting the debate
about what we should do about Islamofascism to a more fundamental
question: "Can we afford to suffer the faithful in silence?"
Unfortunately, Sam Harris, though he seems well-intentioned and
implicitly rational, he approaches philosophical issues in an
undisciplined manner that is, at times, explicitly anti-reason and
altruistic. This poor methodology manifests itself in a variety of
ways: the poor organization of the book, a sometimes plodding prose,
numerous instances of missed opportunities to improve upon good
points, and numerous trips down philosophical blind alleys that are,
alas, already too well-traveled in this day and age. The fact that the
book reaches these conclusions is, fortunately, far outweighed by the
book's more fundamental message, which I think deserves to be
formulated as Thomas Jefferson once put it, "Fix reason firmly in her
seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question
with boldness even the existence of God.... Read the Bible, then, as
you would read Livy or Tacitus." To the extent that he has succeeded
in reminding us forcefully of such great sentiments, Sam Harris
deserves our thanks.
Note: I have issued a partial retraction to this review.
-- CAV
Updates:
1-3-05: Corrected typo in one quote. Corrected one link. Included link
to partial retraction at beginning and end. Added links to
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and Objectivism: The
Philosphy of Ayn Rand.
11-9-06: Added links to Amazon for all books.
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10 Comments:
Gus,
You did a yoeman's job dissecting End of Faith, finding its strengths
and weaknesses. But what I find most interesting about Harris's very
provocative but disorganized and over-stuffed book is that it has
created such a stir, a stir which continues from hard cover into soft
cover, almost two years since its original publication. It is striking
a chord, a nerve,an anxiety. If there was no Sam Harris, he'd have to
be invented. Perhaps endless struggles with Middle East forces
accounts for some of it. But I suspect that the fundamentalist
movement in this country may have as much or,increasingly, more to do
with it. Theocratic tyranny is frightening to many Americans, whatever
its geographic or theological headwater.
Stuart
Posted by Anonymous stuart on February 12, 2006 6:28 PM
Stuart,
Thanks, and I'm glad you found this useful. I would agree that the
interest in the book is also fed by fear of our own theocrats in
America. This makes Harris's book doubly shameful.
Gus
Posted by Blogger Gus Van Horn on February 12, 2006 9:18 PM
As Ayn Rand formulated the argument in For the New Intellectual:
[Kant's] argument amounted to a negation, not only of man's
consciousness, but of any consciousness, of consciousness as such. His
argument, in essence, ran as follows: man is limited to a
consciousness of a specific nature, which perceives by specific means
and no others, therefore, his consciousness is not valid; man is
blind, because he has eyes -- deaf, because he has ears -- deluded,
because he has a mind -- and the things he perceives do not exist,
because he perceives them. (p. 30)
So how does Harris (who is, like myself, a neurobiologist) make this
argument sound scientific? How, that is, does he appeal to our minds
to make them believe that they are not really grasping reality?
[...]
How does Sam Harris know with such certainty that "no human being has
ever experienced an objective world?" No answer. I do not intend to
present Ayn Rand's full theory of epistemology here to rebut Sam
Harris.
I have only just begun to read the Harris book (and am already having
serioud probems with the disinenguous treatment of Chomsky I came
across [discussion here from Harris's own webpage]).But your remarks
on Kant caught my attention. One may well disagree with Kant (it's
easy), but one should disagree with what he actually said. Your
treatment of Kant seems to imply that he posits a universal
subjectivism; this could not be further from the case. The structures
of intuition and the categories are (he believes, at least) the very
basis for receiving objective content about the world. He does not say
that we do not perceive reality; he says that we do have knowledge of
the objectively true world. Wanting to know more than science can
provide (what science provides is precisely knowledge of this
objective world), that is, wanting a "god's-eye" view of the world,
that is what Kant claims we can't have. I seriously doubt that
objectivists believe that we can know everything that has ever
happened or that will ever happen--that would be exactly what this
god's-eye view would provide, and which Kant claims we can't have.
One may disagree with Kant, either because one believes that objective
knowledge is impossible, or because one believes that objective
knowledge is obtained in some other way, but to ascribe this kind of
subjectivism to Kant is really to not understood his position.
Kant does sometimes use the word "reality" [Wirklichkeit] at times to
refer to this "god's-eye view" world, but, again, I doubt that Ayn
Rand is claiming that humans have that kind of knowledge (otherwise
the objection would rest on equivocation involving "reality"). (See
the Critique of Judgment, remark to section 76. German)
OK, maybe I'm being nitpicky. But one should disagree with him for
what he actually believed.
Posted by Anonymous blog responder on February 19, 2006 5:03 PM
B.R.,
You say,
[Kant] does not say that we do not perceive reality; he says that we
do have knowledge of the objectively true world. Wanting to know more
than science can provide (what science provides is precisely knowledge
of this objective world), that is, wanting a "god's-eye" view of the
world, that is what Kant claims we can't have. I seriously doubt that
objectivists believe that we can know everything that has ever
happened or that will ever happen--that would be exactly what this
god's-eye view would provide, and which Kant claims we can't have.
You could help me understand what you are trying to say by explaining
the difference between "perceiving reality" and "having knowledge of
the objectively true world" by means of perception. Your argument
makes it sound like Kant thinks that to know anything, we must be
omniscient.
Rand certainly does not claim that we are omniscient, nor is it
necessary to have to know everything about reality to know something
about it with certainty.
If Kant hold that we can "perceive reality[ without having] knowledge
of the objectively true world", then he is claiming that we don't
grasp reality through our senses.
Gus
Posted by Blogger Gus Van Horn on February 21, 2006 12:17 PM
Dear Gus,
I'm so interested to have a copy of Sam Harris End of Faith.
Unfortunately, I live in the most believer country in religion of
Islam Saudi Arabia. They will not allow this book for Saudis to read
and ordering a hard copy will get me in trouble with local
authorities. I'm not sure how you can help me getting a full PDF copy.
By the way, there is a considerable number of atheists in Saudi. We
cannot reveal ourselves as atheist and lack of freedom to read makes
non-believers to minimum. Thanks to internet that allows us read some
exerts of the opposite opinion. Believing in Islam in Saudi Arabia is
a must not a choice. I wonder how someone chooses to believe when he
or she have no choice to not believe.
If by any means you or your readers can send me a PDF copy of the book
please send it to: perfume_my_life@hotmail.com
Salim
Thanks
Posted by Anonymous Anonymous on May 24, 2006 4:36 AM
Thanks for this review. It is a fairly accurate summary of my thoughts
on the book, but I could not have expressed them as well. Plus I'm too
lazy to go to all that work. ;-)
I've recommended the book to all my friends despite its flaws. I think
it is a good book that could have been great, but the ideas in it are
ideas that need to be discussed, pondered, dissected, and argued
about. By everyone -- agree or disagree with them, the subjects Harris
opines on are subjects everyone needs talk about.
-- Deryk
Posted by Anonymous Anonymous on September 12, 2006 2:42 PM
Deryk,
Thank you, but I think you're letting Harris off too easily.
A far better book than Harris's would be Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who
Needs It. Chapter 7 of that book alone is all that needs to be said --
And it has been said better. -- on the subjects Harris talks about.
All the best.
Gus
Posted by Blogger Gus Van Horn on September 12, 2006 3:26 PM
Gus,
I've just given a preliminary skim of your review which I will follow
up with a careful read when I get a chance. It looks like I am in much
the same place you were. I'll let you know what the virdict is upon
further reflection.
Tom
Posted by Blogger Tom Rowland on March 18, 2007 11:59 AM
I would like to comment on two things in this very long review:
"Harris does not appear to possess a systematic philosophy. "
"as a scientist who understands Harris's gratuitous jargon perfectly
well, that he is either trying to pull the wool over our eyes or
actually believes that our grasp of the world is shaky at best."
Regarding the first item there is always the economical question
whether a person should really "start with the big bang" every time he
tries to explain something? My point of view is that Harris' book
wouldn't have become the success it is if one had to wade through a
very long-winded "systematic philosophy". I think his decision to
simply stand on the shoulders of others and assume a little knowledge
in advance by his readers was acceptable.
Also, a very long and very academic rendition of "the great
philosophical issues that be" would have obscured the very poignant
message from Harris (and Dawkins for that matter) that while we debate
the finer points of theology there are VERY practical things happening
right here in very un-philosophical space: planes flying into
buildings, wars being fought and horrible atrocities being committed
by the people of faith. I suppose the Wittgenstein quote got lost
somewhere, but I have to agree that when it comes to suffering we
"just know it's bad". Somehow we hit solid rock. Most humans have the
same basic propensities across cultures when you manage to pull out
the religious factor. (Was it Harris og Dawkins that explained this
best?)
As for the last quote I mention, that is a classic fallacy of
bifurcation. I offer a third explanation: Harris is simply observing
that science has known for a very long time: that we do not so much
"see objective reality" as we "construct a perception that is USEFUL
for us in this Middle World" (the latter phrase is borrowed from
Dawkins and anyone should look up the video "Richard Dawkins on the
strangeness of science: tedtalks" on YouTube).
Posted by Blogger Vad on September 04, 2007 4:28 AM
(1) One needn't explain his entire philosophy in order to have a
systematic philosophy or to argue with one as his basis.
(2) Anyone who claims that you can "know" that you do not "see
objective reality" is contradicting himself.
Posted by Blogger Gus Van Horn on September 04, 2007 4:16 PM
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