Sam Harris is a Mysterian

scott1328 · **#142** by **scott1328** » Sep 17, 2014 6:04 pm

Sam Harris: "The Self is an illusion", "Free Will is an illusion", "Spirituality is a real and coherent concept"

Something seems wrong here.

FBM · **#143** by **FBM** » Sep 18, 2014 12:18 pm

Looks to me like he's trying to exorcise the woo out of the word 'spiritual.' It also looks to me like he's reifying experience, which I don't think works in his favor.

scott1328 · **#144** by **scott1328** » Sep 18, 2014 6:05 pm

FBM wrote:Looks to me like he's trying to exorcise the woo out of the word 'spiritual.' It also looks to me like he's reifying experience, which I don't think works in his favor.

And yet he opposes others who are attempting to exorcise the woo out of the concept of "free will", and "self"

if you exorcise the woo out of "Spiritual" you have nothing left.

SpeedOfSound · **#145** by **SpeedOfSound** » Sep 19, 2014 12:22 am

GrahamH wrote:

I like him. I would go a step or two further.

tuco · **#146** by **tuco** » Sep 19, 2014 1:04 am

GrahamH wrote:

There is no center. Especially not over shoulder. Alright. It told us something about the nature of the consciousness. And science, spiritual and mystical and whatnot.

As old bachelor, Miroslav Tichý, who allegedly hates life, women, people and marriage ..

Ever wanted to marry Mr Tichý?
Did not want to! Never. Because I cant stand anyone.
Ever been in love Mr Tichý?
No.
Not once?
No.
But you took thousands of photographs of women, so at least one you had to like ..
These are morons questions. I do not care about such things.
But there is no life without love Mr Tichý.
And I do not live? I do not care if I live or not. I just want to die.
...

concludes:

And Mr Tichý, are you not sad to be alone?
I am not alone. I do not know what myself means. What myself? Here I got itching, here pain ..

FBM · **#147** by **FBM** » Sep 19, 2014 2:52 pm

scott1328 wrote:
FBM wrote:Looks to me like he's trying to exorcise the woo out of the word 'spiritual.' It also looks to me like he's reifying experience, which I don't think works in his favor.

And yet he opposes others who are attempting to exorcise the woo out of the concept of "free will", and "self"

if you exorcise the woo out of "Spiritual" you have nothing left.

I have to admit that I'm not an avid follower of Harris. Would you mind pointing me to an example of where he opposes others' attempts to exorcise the woo out of free will and self? I don't see any woo in Harris's model of self. Don't know where he stands on free will.

scott1328 · **#148** by **scott1328** » Sep 19, 2014 4:12 pm

FBM wrote:
scott1328 wrote:
FBM wrote:Looks to me like he's trying to exorcise the woo out of the word 'spiritual.' It also looks to me like he's reifying experience, which I don't think works in his favor.

And yet he opposes others who are attempting to exorcise the woo out of the concept of "free will", and "self"

if you exorcise the woo out of "Spiritual" you have nothing left.

I have to admit that I'm not an avid follower of Harris. Would you mind pointing me to an example of where he opposes others' attempts to exorcise the woo out of free will and self? I don't see any woo in Harris's model of self. Don't know where he stands on free will.

google "Harris vs. Dennett free will"

Here are some highlights
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/refl ... -free-will

But this one is where Harris' hypocrisy stands out
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free ... -free-will

Fans of Dan’s account—and there are many—seem to miss my primary purpose in writing about free will. My goal is to show how the traditional notion is flawed, and to point out the consequences of our being taken in by it. Whenever Dan discusses free will, he bypasses the traditional idea and offers a revised version that he believes to be the only one “worth wanting.” Dan insists that this conceptual refinement is a great strength of his approach, analogous to other maneuvers in science and philosophy that allow us to get past how things seem so that we can discover how they actually are. I do not agree. From my point of view, he has simply changed the subject in a way that either confuses people or lets them off the hook too easily.

Substitute "Spirituality" for "Free Will" and "Sam" for "Dan" in the above paragraph and you will see.
Same for his essays about the Self

SpeedOfSound · **#149** by **SpeedOfSound** » Sep 19, 2014 6:08 pm

scott1328 wrote:
FBM wrote:
scott1328 wrote:
FBM wrote:Looks to me like he's trying to exorcise the woo out of the word 'spiritual.' It also looks to me like he's reifying experience, which I don't think works in his favor.

And yet he opposes others who are attempting to exorcise the woo out of the concept of "free will", and "self"

if you exorcise the woo out of "Spiritual" you have nothing left.

I have to admit that I'm not an avid follower of Harris. Would you mind pointing me to an example of where he opposes others' attempts to exorcise the woo out of free will and self? I don't see any woo in Harris's model of self. Don't know where he stands on free will.

google "Harris vs. Dennett free will"

Here are some highlights
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/refl ... -free-will

But this one is where Harris' hypocrisy stands out
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free ... -free-will

Fans of Dan’s account—and there are many—seem to miss my primary purpose in writing about free will. My goal is to show how the traditional notion is flawed, and to point out the consequences of our being taken in by it. Whenever Dan discusses free will, he bypasses the traditional idea and offers a revised version that he believes to be the only one “worth wanting.” Dan insists that this conceptual refinement is a great strength of his approach, analogous to other maneuvers in science and philosophy that allow us to get past how things seem so that we can discover how they actually are. I do not agree. From my point of view, he has simply changed the subject in a way that either confuses people or lets them off the hook too easily.

Substitute "Spirituality" for "Free Will" and "Sam" for "Dan" in the above paragraph and you will see.
Same for his essays about the Self

I suspect you aren't quite understanding secular spirituality.

scott1328 · **#150** by **scott1328** » Sep 19, 2014 7:46 pm

I don't give a shit about secular spirituality. What chaps my ass is Harris berating others for using woo-laden terminology when he is using the most woo-laden term there is.

SpeedOfSound · **#151** by **SpeedOfSound** » Sep 19, 2014 8:14 pm

scott1328 wrote:I don't give a shit about secular spirituality. What chaps my ass is Harris berating others for using woo-laden terminology when he is using the most woo-laden term there is.

Well... I suppose that's fair. We do have to explore the actual reality of all of these words though. I think FW is a bad one and very misleading See my discussion on the bullshit laden word 'unconscious'.

I can find perfect usage for spiritual but I can't find any for FW. So maybe that's it? His point?

SpeedOfSound · **#152** by **SpeedOfSound** » Sep 27, 2014 11:07 am

Received my copy of Strawson's Selves yesterday. Looks fantastic. I hope I can give it some time.

Teuton · **#153** by **Teuton** » Sep 27, 2014 2:10 pm

Some excerpts:

"Whatever the ultimate relationship between consciousness and matter, almost everyone will agree that at some point in the development of complex organisms like ourselves, consciousness seems to emerge. This emergence does not depend on a change of materials, for you and I are built of the same atoms as a fern or a ham sandwich. Instead, the birth of consciousness must be the result of organization: Arranging atoms in certain ways appears to bring about an experience of being that very collection of atoms. This is undoubtedly one of the deepest mysteries given to us to contemplate."
(p. 53)

"We know, of course, that human minds are the product of human brains. There is simply no question that your ability to decode and understand this sentence depends upon neurophysiological events taking place inside your head at this moment. But most of this mental work occurs entirely in the dark, and it is a mystery why any part of the process should be attended by consciousness. Nothing about a brain, when surveyed as a physical system, suggests that it is a locus of experience. Were we not already brimming with consciousness ourselves, we would find no evidence for it in the universe—nor would we have any notion of the many experiential states that it gives rise to. The only proof that it is like something to be you at this moment is the fact (obvious only to you) that it is like something to be you.
However we propose to explain the emergence of consciousness—be it in biological, functional, computational, or any other terms—we have committed ourselves to this much: First there is a physical world, unconscious and seething with unperceived events; then, by virtue of some physical property or process, consciousness itself springs, or staggers, into being. This idea seems to me not merely strange but perfectly mysterious. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. When we linger over the details, however, this notion of emergence seems merely a placeholder for a miracle."
(pp. 55-6)

"I am sympathetic with those who, like the philosopher Colin McGinn and the psychologist Steven Pinker, have suggested that perhaps the emergence of consciousness is simply incomprehensible in human terms. Every chain of explanation must end somewhere—generally with a brute fact that neglects to explain itself. Perhaps consciousness presents an impasse of this sort."
(p. 57)

"I will invoke a variety of concepts that have yet to do much useful work in our study of the natural world, or even of the brain, but do very heavy lifting throughout the course of our lives: concepts such as self and ego and I. Admittedly, these terms appear less than scientific, but we have no new words with which to name, and subsequently study, one of the most striking features of our existence: Most of us feel that our experience of the world refers back to a self—not to our bodies precisely but to a center of consciousness that exists somehow interior to the body, behind the eyes, inside the head. The feeling that we call 'I' seems to define our point of view in every moment, and it also provides an anchor for popular beliefs about souls and freedom of will."
(p. 83)

"The pronoun I is the name that most of us put to the sense that we are the thinkers of our thoughts and the experiencers of our experience. It is the sense that we have of possessing (rather than of merely being) a continuum of experience. We will see, however, that this feeling is not a necessary property of the mind. And the fact that people report losing their sense of self to one or another degree suggests that the experience of being a self can be selectively interfered with."
(p. 91)

"Obviously, there is something in our experience that we are calling 'I,' apart from the sheer fact that we are conscious; otherwise, we would never describe our subjectivity in the way we do, and a person would have no basis for feeling that she had lost her sense of self, whatever the circumstances. Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint just what it is we take ourselves to be. Many philosophers have noticed this problem, but few in the West have understood that the failure to locate the self can produce more than mere confusion. I suspect that this difference between Eastern and Western philosophy has something to do with the influence of Abrahamic religion and its doctrine of the soul. Christianity, in particular, presents impressive obstacles to thinking intelligently about the nature of the human mind, asserting, as it does, the real existence of individual souls who are subject to the eternal judgment of God.
What does it mean to say that the self cannot be found or that it is illusory? It is not to say that people are illusory. I see no reason to doubt that each of us exists or that the ongoing history of our personhood can be conventionally described as the history of our 'selves.' But the self in this more global, biographical sense undergoes sweeping changes over the course of a lifetime. While you are in many ways physically and psychologically continuous with the person you were at age seven, you are not the same. Your life has surely been punctuated by transitions that significantly changed you: marriage, divorce, college, military service, parenthood, bereavement, serious illness, fame, exposure to other cultures, imprisonment, professional success, loss of a job, religious conversion. Each of us knows what it is like to develop new capacities, understandings, opinions, and tastes over the course of time. It is convenient to ascribe these changes to the self. That is not the self I am talking about.
The self that does not survive scrutiny is the subject of experience in each present moment—the feeling of being a thinker of thoughts inside one’s head, the sense of being an owner or inhabitant of a physical body, which this false self seems to appropriate as a kind of vehicle. Even if you don’t believe such a homunculus exists—perhaps because you believe, on the basis of science, that you are identical to your body and brain rather than a ghostly resident therein—you almost certainly feel like an internal self in almost every waking moment. And yet, however one looks for it, this self is nowhere to be found. It cannot be seen amid the particulars of experience, and it cannot be seen when experience itself is viewed as a totality. However, its absence can be found—and when it is, the feeling of being a self disappears."
(pp. 91-2)

"For most people, experiencing the intrinsic selflessness of consciousness requires considerable training. It is, however, possible to notice that consciousness—that in you which is aware of your experience in this moment—does not feel like a self. It does not feel like 'I.' What you are calling 'I' is itself a feeling that arises among the contents of consciousness. Consciousness is prior to it, a mere witness of it, and, therefore, free of it in principle."
(p. 104)

"As a matter of neurology, the sense of having a persistent and unified self must be an illusion, because it is built upon processes that, by their very nature as processes, are transitory and multifarious. There is no region of the brain that can be the seat of a soul. Everything that makes us human—our emotional lives, capacity for language, the impulses that give rise to complex behavior, and our ability to restrain other impulses that we consider uncivilized—is spread across the entirety of the cortex and many subcortical brain regions as well. The whole brain is involved in making us what we are. So we need not await any data from the lab to say that the self cannot be what it seems.
The sense that we are unified subjects is a fiction, produced by a multitude of separate processes and structures of which we are not aware and over which we exert no conscious control. What is more, many of these processes can be independently disturbed, producing deficits that would seem impossible if they were not so easily verified. Some people, for instance, are able to see perfectly but are unable to detect motion. Others are able to see objects and their motion but are unable to locate them in space. How the mind depends upon the brain, and the manner in which its powers can be disrupted, defies common sense. Here, as elsewhere in science, how things seem is often a poor guide to how they are.
The claim that we can experience consciousness without a conventional sense of self—that there is no rider on the horse—seems to be on firm ground neurologically. Whatever causes the brain to produce the false notion that there is a thinker living somewhere inside the head, it makes sense that it could stop doing this. And once it does, our inner lives become more faithful to the facts."
(pp. 115-6)

"Although we are only beginning to understand the human mind at the level of the brain, and we know nothing about how consciousness itself comes into being, it isn’t too soon to say that the conventional self is an illusion. There is no place for a soul inside your head. Consciousness itself is divisible—as we saw in the case of split-brain patients—and even in an intact brain consciousness is blind to most of what the mind is doing. Everything we take ourselves to be at the level of our subjectivity—our memories and emotions, our capacity for language, the very thoughts and impulses that give rise to our behavior—depends upon distinct processes that are spread out over the whole of the brain. Many of these can be independently interrupted or extinguished. The sense, therefore, that we are unified subjects—the unchanging thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience—is an illusion. The conventional self is a transitory appearance among transitory appearances, and it vanishes when looked for. We need not await any data from the lab to say that self-transcendence is possible. And we need not become masters of meditation to realize its benefits. It is within our capacity to recognize the nature of thoughts, to awaken from the dream of being merely ourselves and, in this way, to become better able to contribute to the well-being of others.
Spirituality begins with a reverence for the ordinary that can lead us to insights and experiences that are anything but ordinary. And the conventional opposition between humility and hubris has no place here. Yes, the cosmos is vast and appears indifferent to our mortal schemes, but every present moment of consciousness is profound. In subjective terms, each of us is identical to the very principle that brings value to the universe. Experiencing this directly—not merely thinking about it—is the true beginning of spiritual life."
(pp. 205-6)

(Harris, Sam. Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.)

GrahamH · **#154** by **GrahamH** » Sep 29, 2014 7:05 am

Teuton wrote:Some excerpts:
...

Consciousness itself is divisible—as we saw in the case of split-brain patients—and even in an intact brain consciousness is blind to most of what the mind is doing. Everything we take ourselves to be at the level of our subjectivity—our memories and emotions, our capacity for language, the very thoughts and impulses that give rise to our behavior—depends upon distinct processes that are spread out over the whole of the brain. Many of these can be independently interrupted or extinguished. The sense, therefore, that we are unified subjects—the unchanging thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience—is an illusion.

So, if we are not literally subjective thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience what is the thing to be explained? It is not the ineffable mystery of being subjective thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience. It is something else. It is the explanation of this 'illusion'.

tuco · **#155** by **tuco** » Sep 29, 2014 10:02 am

Mr Harris should look into mirror. Then say he is not unified.

GrahamH · **#156** by **GrahamH** » Sep 29, 2014 10:31 am

tuco wrote:Mr Harris should look into mirror. Then say he is not unified.

What do you think that would show?

tuco · **#157** by **tuco** » Sep 29, 2014 10:36 am

Mr Harris himself.

GrahamH · **#158** by **GrahamH** » Sep 29, 2014 10:44 am

tuco wrote:Mr Harris himself.

It that an attempt at a joke, or just you missing the point entirely?

tuco · **#159** by **tuco** » Sep 29, 2014 10:48 am

I am just illusion.

GrahamH · **#160** by **GrahamH** » Sep 29, 2014 11:00 am

tuco wrote:I am just illusion.

That seems to answer my question.

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