I also read “Reason: the God that fails, but we keep socially promoting….”. It would be intersting to know how much variation there is in individual opinions that are quenched due to group conformity, and where the threshold is for popular opinion to start to move. Do you perhaps need a single entity (or a few entities) that has enough clout within the tribe to break taboos and broaden / change the accepted opinions?

Also, I find myself having a lot of opinions that would make me an outsider in my tribe. Makes you wonder are the likes of me and Harris in the minority, while the vast majority really just agree with the consensus and don’t think about it, or are most people just masking their disagreement with their tribe? My take is that it would seem strange in an evolutionary sense that we would be inclined to disagree with each other. Therefore questioning of accepted norms might just a side product of a certain level of curioisty and intellect.

Anyway, thanks for the interesting post, found here through a friend and might become a more regular visitor.

Sam Harris is highly controversial. He is blunt. He is kind of like Intellectual Eminem (spitting it into the mic) and I, for one, appreciate it. If nothing else, his writings, lectures, and debates get people talking, arguing, searching for a way to back up their points. That’s good.

There is an implication in calling SH “naive” about the power of reason– one that doesn’t set well with me. As a former teacher, I believe strongly that you must set the bar high. Why? Well, expectations have a lot do with how a person performs. Sam Harris sets the bar high, expecting and believing that it is possible for humans to stretch their minds, to utilize reason to increase happiness and decrease suffering. For me, when SH is called naive with respect to reason, it makes me a little… disappointed in Razib Khan. In my opinion, it immediately lowers the bar for humans. Accept that we are not reasonable and get those lofty ideals outa here? Nah. Not for me!

You seem to be a well rounded and informed mediator on the subjects addressed on your blog. I have been a devoted reader of Sam Harris for a time now, I have enjoyed his books as well as the articles on his blog. Perhaps it speaks to my gullibility, however, had he never posted the article on his blog, Wrestling the Troll, it may have never occurred to me that his positions were capable of instigating the level of controversy that I have discovered them being engaged with in comment threads and even the blogs of reputable individuals.

I can not help but to begin to get the impression that I may have missed something. Admittedly, I had, until this point been resistant to the proposition that the preachments of Mr. Harris were lacking in depth, or as you say”overly simplistic”, but after reading your post I was given to the impression that you may just be on to something, if only the more pertinent of your criticisms weren’t so vague.

I hope that you will permit me to solicit a bit of clarification on a few points.

I have read Mr. Harris extensively, and though it is true that at times he is guilty of over-extending the reach that many of his conclusions intrinsically allot, I have always expected that these instances had more to do with trying to fill up blank pages than an attempt to truly be serious about supplementing an argument, and though that criticism stands, I have been pleasantly surprised to see Harris address the accusations of prose for the sake of prose, by slimming down his efforts into bite sized e-books.

As for the “normative vision that Harris was promoting” in the sense of the cumulative summation of his argument, could you correct me if I have misunderstood, but the message that I have gathered from his writing had absolutely nothing to do with a philosophical attempt to define religion as a phenomenon. Though, the identification of the parameters of the effect of religion/organized superstition/mass delusion has had on society at large was a necessary measure in the benefit of the actual message that I took from Harris’ work. Harris, in his own words, brilliantly summarizes the ideal that he would have his work promote as “conversational intolerance”.

In what way can it be said that advocating for skeptical inquiry in the face of false certainty is an overly simplistic position? How would you seek to amend this position to make it more astute? More importantly, if indeed you agree that my summary of Harris’ over all stance is accurate, can you please elaborate for me on exactly how it qualifies as a vision that you can not fully support?

Next, you say: The issue which Harris faces is that in some ways he has a naivete about the power of reason to shape our future and our present.

Perhaps my first question should be to ask you to clarify your meaning when you use the word reason, but that would sound patronizing. I assume that by reason ,you mean the ability to judge consequences, past and present, based on the most accurate representation of the of the world that an individual is aware of.

It would be a cheap shot, and a frivolous betrayal of etiquette, to begin with the assertion that ALL behavior is guided by reason, but not all reason is guided by the best representation of the world that humankind has reached to date. I only mention it here because that distinction may not be immediately evident to some of your readers, and it is important to note. Unless you believe that all opinions are equal, and that there exists such a thing as objective morality, or perhaps that “things” will eventually work themselves out, then espousing the possibility that anything other than reason has the ability to shape our future and present is simply nonsensical. Or if in fact I am incorrect and there exists another force (other than ignorance) which wields equal claim to the potential to shape human history, I hope that you will share what it is.

I had not anticipated that my comments here would be so… wordy? I would hate to give the impression that I am attempting some sort of an ambush by accosting you with a never ending script of inquiry. Though I do hope that you will engage me towards a resolution of my confusion on the controversy surrounding Harris, I would like to extend to you the opportunity to first respond to the issues that I have introduced here. If it is a productive exchange, I hope to continue with a few more issues.

“Asian values” as used in public rhetoric in the 90s = crony capitalism. Yes, it died instantly in the rhetoric with the Asian financial crisis.

basically became a non-entity after the 1998 asian flu. ‘asian values’ has had as long term influence as ‘japan inc’ or the petro hegemony of the 1970s. it was an idea which seems only to have been dependent on a very specific set of economic conditions (no one quite knew how long japan was going to stay ‘lost’ in ~1995, and the ‘asian tigers’ were still booming).

Do you think China might become powerful enough to be able to form a lasting counter-philosophy to Western values like Islamic countries have?

i think it is a possibility. japan is an example of a country which has integrated aspects of modernity, basically western culture, and retained its distinctiveness. to be fair one can say the same about even iran, which allows women to vote and has had female politicians. this is a form of radicalism pioneered in the west.

a major difference between ‘asian values’ and ‘islamic values’ though is that islamic values and the isalmic world is already very international. in this it is like western values and the western world. this is in contrast to india or china, which are civilizations constrained to particular nation-states (and their near abroads). india and china may retain their distinctiveness, but on the international stage they may not challenge the west because their solutions are national, and they don’t have a universal vision. liberal western modernity does. notionally so does islam, though it is far weaker, and far less appealing. but within already muslim nations it does have some appeal and staying power in relation to international modernity, which is derived from the west.

What do you think of the “Asian values” concept that came into fashion in some East and Southeast Asian countries several years ago? Leaders who promulgated the concept tried to set it against Western values (chiefly individualism and democracy). Most East Asian countries have democratized as they have become richer, but it remains to be seen if China will. Do you think China might become powerful enough to be able to form a lasting counter-philosophy to Western values like Islamic countries have?

Is it right to assume you are, or were at one point, a fan of Justin Raimondo?

Related to the OP, whenever I object to this and similar terms on the science and academic “liberal progressive” blogs, pointing out it’s a bigoted term itself with an ugly history, even now used primarily to put down lower class people, I am instantly attacked. No matter how liberal my previous comments have been, I am accused of being a racist, getting my talking points from Fox News (which I’ve never watched) etc. And yes, subjected to a lot of condescending comments attempting to educate me.

nice

again, please don’t conflate my own position with sam harris on the substance of geopolitics. i have affiliations with some of the most anti-neocon right-wingers out there.

sara’s comment is part of the problem. she assumes that i have sam’s opinions on geopolitics, when i don’t. in fact i happen to know a lot about middle eastern history and ethnography (more than she does almost certainly), and written extensively on this. this is one reason i disagree with sam. but since i have given some ‘signals’ that i’m not on ‘her team’ the natural inference is that i’m talking out of my ass. this is a conventional problem with people who assume because i don’t accept their specific narrative i must have some really stupid views

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/12/the-poverty-of-multiculturalist-discourse/

For most people, contributing their views and ideas furthering the narrative(normative) of the group is their only way to confront “bad” actions that they aren’t part of or see near them.

Why would you be surprised at that?

perhaps. as i said, i’m not much of a consumer of SH’s material, but i see the utility of his production. this is my attitude toward the ‘new atheism’ in general. i’m not one, but it has its role. more specifically re: SH, i think his positions are overly elegant and simple, and i have broad sympathy with many who have criticized him for his airbrushing of the complexity of the issues. but, a lot of the reaction that i saw above wasn’t of that sort at all, but a primal scream of outrage (mind you, not all). that is what i think SH was describing in his post, and that certainly rings true, because i myself am regularly the target of such volleys.

Mr. Khan writes:

“If Sam Harris goes off the reservation on such an important topic, what is he? To borrow a page from fashionable academy, Harris becomes the Other.”

The polarization that is so prevalent in the US and Canada today stems from just this mindset. Or maybe the polarization causes it. Maybe it’s a positive feedback loop. But it IS truth that if a politician or intellectual figure takes a single position that is not in accordance with the view of his supporters, then that person is castigated and cast out. So what happens? More and more legislative votes are split along strict party lines.

This binary view that is the hallmark of the culture war here is stifling critical examination of issues because in this climate, who dares to ask the hard questions (profiling, torture, abortion, etc.)? Harris at least tries to examine the world and is brave to publish his thoughts although it does seem naive of him to be surprised by the vitriol at this late date.

Hitchens suffered the same villification for having ONE view that did not gel with his fan base. Probably the greatest advocate for freedoms and free speech in modern times became hated for having a different take on a complex issue. That’s all it took.

Our western society, particularly North American nations, had better remember how to disagree with reason and critical faculties or compromise is dead and the culture war may be waged by two groups of totalitarian thought police. Yeah, that’s a bit of hyperbole.

Cheers,

The point obviously isn’t that particular combinations of views are intrinsically untenable, but that you’d expect views not to be almost perfectly -anti- correlated, at least if the driving force were the argument, not team membership.

I was also mildly surprised to see you walk back the incest/torture analogy (in terms of underlying dynamic, I mean, as opposed to higher disapproval of advocacy than of practice). It seemed like a pretty good one in the sense that worlds without them tend to be nicer than those with, but arguments defending proscriptions tend to be fairly hard (and subject to plenty of counterarguments and cases). Taboo works better in other words.

But more important, re: too much faith in reason. I do think this is a reasonable point — human beings simply aren’t rational. *But* I think Razib gives far too short a shrift to the importance of having someone like Harris out there strenuously arguing for reason and rationality. Otherwise, how will we progress, even a bit?

Thanks again for the post (and to SH for tweeting it, which is how I found it).