Sam Harris, historical myth, and arguing against certainty

A friend interested in my opinion asked for my reply to the following. My replies, line my line, appear below. - Z

Dostoevsky said,'if there's no God then you can do whatever you want'... see this is why I have such frustration with people like Sam Harris. The sort of radical atheists because they seem to think that once human beings abandon their grounding in the transcendent that the plausible way forward is with a sort of purist rationality that automatically attributes to other people equivalent value. I just don't understand that.They believe that thats the rational pathway? What the hell is irrational about me getting from you whatever I want when I want it?... Its pure naked self interest how is that irrational... I don't understand that.... See, to me the universe that people like Dawkins and Harris inhabit is so intensely conditioned by mythological presuppositions that they take for granted the ethic that emerges out of that. As if it's just a given, a rational given.... YOU DON'T GET IT. The ethic that you think is normative is nesting in this tremendously lengthy history. Much of which was expressed in mythological formulation. You wipe that out you don't get to keep all the presuppositions and just assume that they're rationally axiomatic. To make a rational argument you have to start with an initial proposition. Well the proposition that underlies western culture is that there's a "transcendent morality'. Now you can say that thats a transcendent morality that's instantiated in the figure of God. That's fine. You can even call that a personification of the morality, if you don't want to move into a metaphysical space. I'm not arguing for the existence of God. I'm arguing that the ethic that drives our culture is predicated on the idea of God and that you can't just take that idea away and expect the thing to just remain intact midair without any foundational support.

<<Dostoevsky said... >>

Not to be pedantic, but Dostoevsky wrote it; Ivan Karamazov "said" it. And whether Ivan endorsed it is a more subtle matter.

<<if there's no God then you can do whatever you want'... see this is why I have such frustration with people like Sam Harris."

Ah, well, if there's no god, you are allowed to be frustrated with whomever you like. Ain't no referee going to call you on it. Go on and rage, hombre.

<<The sort of radical atheists... >>

Is Harris a radical; in what way? I wouldn't say so. His atheism is of a historically familiar and unradical sort. His xenophobia, on the other hand... that's ALSO not radical, but it is ugly.

<<... because they seem to think that once human beings abandon their grounding in the transcendent that the plausible way forward is with a sort of purist rationality that automatically attributes to other people equivalent value.>>

Citation needed; where does Harris (or any other thought leaders among that "sort of radical atheist") profess a belief that a "way forward" following the death of gods, is to automatically grant warrant to ANY proposition? Wouldn't it be more consistent to characterize their position as expecting ANY proposition to be subjected to rationalist scrutiny?

I don't understand what "equivalent value" is to be attributed to people. The value of human life? The value of the contribution individuals make to society?

<<I just don't understand that.They believe that thats the rational pathway? What the hell is irrational about me getting from you whatever I want when I want it?...>>

To adopt the kind of argument this person might find persuasive, I could use arguments based in evidence from game theory, economics, and primatology (for starters) which explain why a rational person might wish to suppose a society in which mores (and conventions, and laws, etc) prevent individuals from raping, stealing, etc, willy-nilly.

<<Its pure naked self interest how is that irrational... >>

That impulsive violent acts of self-serving appropriation SEEM TO THIS PERSON to be in the interest of one's self, is, I think, a shortcoming of imagination. If we imagine the conditions of a society in which such acts of self-serving are unopposed, we can envision how things would quickly more from "nasty, brutish, and short", to ... much worse. Is it one's naked self-interest, to bring about conditions in which mere survival is increasingly perilous? Or is it in one's self-interest to contribute to a net of social conventions which allows me to breathe easy around my neighbors, without worrying whether they're going to steal my banana or my mate, murder my offspring, or push me off a branch?

<<I don't understand that.... >>

Okay. Admission of ignorance is the first step towards knowledge. (See, I can troll too.)

<<See, to me the universe that people like Dawkins and Harris inhabit is so intensely conditioned by mythological presuppositions that they take for granted the ethic that emerges out of that.>>

There is a room full of economists somewhere that need to be told that their conception of reciprocal self-interest needs to be utterly scrapped, as it is based on mythological presuppositions.

<<As if it's just a given, a rational given.... >>

Citation? I don't know who posits this.

<<YOU DON'T GET IT.>>

The clarity of this sentence is refreshing.

<<The ethic that you think is normative is nesting in this tremendously lengthy history.>>

Who thinks what is normative? (I'm not making fun. The importance of clear writing is always worth underscoring.)

<<Much of which was expressed in mythological formulation.>>

I'm not familiar with any theory of cultural history which posits that any cultural tradition we have inherited in the form of myth would have been ORIGINALLY EXPRESSED in the form OF myth.

<<You wipe that out you don't get to keep all the presuppositions and just assume that they're rationally axiomatic.>>

Pretty sure that, pace Russell, Godel and the rest, that NO reasoning can proceed without axiomatic assumptions which themselves cannot be analyzed conclusively within the propositional framework you are operating. This is, of course, an academic and therefore trivial observation, since most forms of reasoning of use to human beings in the day to day -- causal, moral, predictive, social, etc. -- don't depend on anything at all like the standards of formal validity pertaining to mathematical logic.

<<To make a rational argument you have to start with an initial proposition.>>

Hmm, more or less. I'll allow it.

<<Well the proposition that underlies western culture is that there's a "transcendent morality'.>>

Untrue. The body of institutions -- distributed widely across the globe and with deep roots in history -- which I believe this author is referring to reductively as "western culture", is not grounded on any single proposition. To propose that it is, is to buy into a historical myth. Now, where have I just been reading that myth is bunk and should be cast out of any rational society?

<<Now you can say that thats a transcendent morality that's instantiated in the figure of God.>>

I don't think you can say it, because the noun "transcendent morality" isn't the kind of thing that the predicate function "instantiation" can be applied to.  But I'm not the grammar police, and if this author wants to play slippy-sloppy with his propositions, go to town.

<<That's fine. You can even call that a personification of the morality, if you don't want to move into a metaphysical space.>>

So we're allowing for the ontological identification of a transcendent morality with the figure of God with a personification of morality, for the sake of conversation and so we don't move things into the confusing environs of metaphysics? This is not the way to cut through the tangle of this topic, my friends.

<<I'm not arguing for the existence of God.>>

It is surprising to me that this was on the table even as a possible misunderstanding of this author's position. Have I missed something?

<<I'm arguing that the ethic that drives our culture... >>

To suppose that there is any single ethic driving our culture, deserving of the singular emphatic deictic "the" is, as above, to buy into a historical myth. Relatedly, to suppose that there is any single culture to which "we" all belong, deserving of the exclusive "our", is, again, to buyt into a historical myth. The myth (body of myths, actually) that these suppositions buy into is adjacent to the nationalism, fascisms, and populist reactionary conservatisms we see making their ambitions more publicly known at the present time.

<<... is predicated on the idea of God... >>

It would have been nice if this post had posited this thesis, and then spent some time defending it, instead of spending time building suspense of the thesis, and then flapping off after delivering it, like a seagull dropping a sloppy white present on a beach-goer's head.

<<.. and that you can't just take that idea away and expect the thing to just remain intact midair without any foundational support."

So you say. But you haven't demonstrated that you know anything about history, sociology, theology, economics, political science, etc., such that we could take your word for it; you haven't explained persuasively that there is a "western culture" which resembles the god-grounded monolith you described; you haven't indicated who the "radical atheists" are who want to "take that idea away"; and you haven't named -- even with a disdainful label like "the sort of radical atheists" -- the agents who "expect the thing to remain intact" without "foundational support."

Post-mortem

The most generous reading of this post is that it is not thoughtfully or carefully written. A less generous reading is that the author is not thoughtful about these matters.

HOW to be more thoughtful about these matters is both an easy and a tough question. Easy, because you can say: "Think more!"; but in reality the conditions which conduct us to thoughtfulness are rare. For the most part we're swimming upstream, against the currents of economic need, social discouragement, media noise, corporate parasitism, and so on. A good inducement toward thoughtfulness, I have always thought and I am not alone in thinking so, is reading. I'll end this response with a few reading suggestions, for the author of the short essay above or for anyone interested to know about some of the influences which bear on my own thinking about these matters. So: I recommend reading the entirety of The Brothers Karamazov, for a start; and maybe reading Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism", Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Good and Evil, Hoffer's The True Believer, Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society, and de Staël's Delphine (if you want to marry advocacy for the ideals of the Enlightenment with the melodrama of plausible human heartache).

* * *

I gave this short essay such focused attention because I was asked for my feedback on it. In general, I don't think this kind of dissection is a good use of anyone's time. There's no scoreboard where folks can rack up points for being "right" or "brutal" in this kind of exchange. And it's unlikely that even a very patient and chummy reply would help the author think very differently about the points expressed in the essay.

If there's any point at all to going toe-to-toe like this, it's for the sake of the audience... the other forum members, the social media followers, everyone spectating on the exchange. They have less at stake in the dispute, and therefore are less likely to retreat reflexively into a defensive stance protecting their original position on the matters discussed.

Whatever the particulars of the debate -- cultural heritage, the existence of higher powers, the question of what is and is not good sound rationalism -- there is usually a more important argument taking place, implicit between the lines: an argument against certainty.

I was chatting with an old friend this morning, an evolutionary biologist (Hispanic human; first-generation scientist), and she happened to be talking against certainty with such a compelling tone of conviction that I'll share it here as a close to this post. She writes: 

My latest bend is to interrogate liberals on why they believe evolution is true, to expose the fact that they're just as gullible as the people who don't believe in evolution -- because they don't know the facts! They just get their media bites from a different source, even if that source happens to be correct. Morally pontificating from a point of ignorance makes you look like an ass. I bristle at the self-righteousness of certitude, and am immediately dubious of the underlying reasons for it.

I bristle, too, and hope you all do as well.

* * *

Updated the day after to note that the friend who sent this quoted material to me has alerted me that it was written by Canada's Jordan Peterson. Rings true.