sam harris on religious experience

Sam Harris on Religious Experience

Over the holidays I watched most of the video of a dialogue among

Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris (the

"Four Horsemen" of the recent mini-boom in books criticizing religion

by atheists). There was a brief discussion near the beginning led by

Harris which I wanted to highlight (the transcript is here). One thing

I have liked about Harris, who is pursuing a doctorate in neuroscience

in his day job, is his respect for the challenge that the "hard

problem" of first person conscious experience poses for a

conventionally materialistic worldview. In the video, he discusses an

obstacle to the ability of the atheists to win the hearts and minds of

believers: the phenomenon of what is traditionally referred to as

"religious" experience.

Here's the excerpt:

[Harris] Well. I think there's one answer to that question which

may illuminate a difference, or at least the difference that I

have, I think, maybe with all three of you. There's something about

... I mean, I still use words like "spiritual" and "mystical"

without furrowing my brow too much and, I admit, to the

consternation of many atheists. I think there is a range of

experience that is rare, and that is only talked about without

obvious qualms in religious discourse. And because it's only talked

about in religious discourse, it is just riddled with superstition.

And it's used to cash out various metaphysical schemes which it

can't reasonably do. But clearly people have extraordinary

experiences. Whether they have them on LSD, or they have them

because they were alone in a cave for a year, or they have them

because just happen to have the neurology that is particularly

labile that allows for it, but people have self-transcending

experiences. And people have the best day of their life where

everything seemed, you know, they seemed at one with nature. And

for that, because religion seems to be the only game in town in

talking about those experiences and dignifying them, that's one

reason why I think it seems to be taboo to criticise it, because

you are talking about the most important moments in people's lives

and trashing them, at least from their view.

[Dawkins] Well, I don't have to agree with you, Sam, in order to

say that it's a very good thing you're saying that sort of thing,

because it shows that, as you say, religion is not the only game in

town when it comes to being spiritual. It's like it's a good idea

to have somebody from the political right who is an atheist,

because otherwise there's a confusion of values which doesn't help

us. And it's much better to have this diversity in other areas. But

I think I sort of do agree with you. But even if I didn't, I think

it was valuable to have that.

[Harris] Right.

[Hitchens] If one could make one change, and only one, mine would

be to distinguish the numinous from the supernatural.

[Dawkins] Yes.

[Harris] Right.

[Hitchens] You had a marvelous quotation from Francis Collins, the

genome pioneer, who said, while mountaineering one day, he was so

overcome by the landscape, and then went down on his knees and

accepted Jesus Christ. A complete non sequitur.

I agree with the spirit of that last comment by Hitchens - I find it

extremely implausible to think that someone who has not been exposed

to Christianity will ever have any vision or experience specific to

it. People have experiences marked by powerful positive feelings of

transcendence, unity, etc. and then interpret them through the

familiar conceptual lens which appears to do justice to them.

Where I go further than Harris does here is that I see this as a

special example of the general problem of first person experience.

People mostly don't think experience is an accidental part of an

essentially non-experiential reality. They think experience is

something fundamental, and I agree. The trick is to see that one can

have a worldview which privileges experience in this way without

otherwise embracing supernatural entities or interventions.

Labels: Mind, Theism

posted by Steve at 1:23 PM

7 Comments:

Blogger MikeS said...

Err..so if you 'see' a ghost, or get a bit of a spooky feeling,

your experience is priveleged? No amount of reasoning will

convince you that the phenomenal is suspect because of human

fallibility?

January 28, 2008 3:08 PM

Blogger Steve said...

Hello Mike S. I didn't mean to imply the specific content of

the experience as interpreted or reported is privileged. That

is highly fallible. But the existence of the "raw" experience

(whether it's due to LSD, sleep deprivation, or an external

stimulus) is fundamental.

January 28, 2008 4:12 PM

Blogger MikeS said...

Fundamental to what?

January 28, 2008 6:07 PM

Blogger Steve said...

Metaphysically fundamental. As in a worldview which says that

the universe is at its basic level a causal network of

experiential events, as opposed to a worldview which assumes

things are comprised of non-experiential material particles.

I'm oversimplifying here, -- for instance I think human

experience is a complicated composite thing. The point I'm

emphasizing is that first-person experience is not completely

irreducible to non-experiential facts or entities (as I think

is implied by materialism as traditionally understood).

January 28, 2008 7:58 PM

Blogger Steve said...

The last sentence of my previous comment should read "not

completely reducible..." -- sorry for the mistake.

January 29, 2008 9:13 AM

Blogger MikeS said...

Yes, I understand your argument. I don't understand how

anything can be mataphysically fundamental. By its nature

metaphysics is underdetermined, because Occam's razor is a

metaphysical axiom.

I fully accept that 'our' human universe is a causal network of

experiential events. That is what I think Kant meant by 'the

phenomenal'. I just doubt that raw experience is anything more

than self-referential physics and chemistry. I don't believe in

zombies.

January 29, 2008 2:54 PM

Blogger Steve said...

Thanks for the dialogue. To your first point, as you know I

can't refute an argument that there is no metaphysically

fundamental ground or ending point for explanations. On the

last point, I think I can see a way to get physics and

chemistry from experience (they are third-person descriptions

of natural events), but not the other way around.

January 29, 2008 4:37 PM

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