In light of the most recent PEL episode, we folks in PEL's Not School will be holding a discussion on free will this month through next month. Some of the conversation will be continuous with and complementary to the PEL guys' discussion as well as perhaps raise other issues. For the remainder of this month, we'll be reading John Searle's essay "Freedom as a Problem in Continue Reading …
Search Results for: sam harris
Win $20k from Sam Harris
Think back a few years. If you frequented The Partially Examined Life during that time, you’ll remember the heated debate inspired by Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape (TML). The arguments in posts and comment sections across the blogosphere eventually took on a particularly impressive rancor. The ambient controversy helped land Harris on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Continue Reading …
Sam Harris on the Is/Ought Distinction
Sam Harris got a lot of grief on our Churchland episode. Whatever the difficulties that Churchland (and allegedly Hume) may have with the is/ought distinction, Harris provides a much easier target for this kind of criticism. Here's Harris specifically responding (starting around 1:40) to the is/ought distinction: "a firewall between facts and values in our Continue Reading …
Defending Religion from the Left (Jackson Lears on Sam Harris)
Historian Jackson Lears has an interesting attack on Sam Harris in The Nation. I'm not endorsing everything in this everything-but-the-kitchen sink assault (on both Harris' religious and moral theories), but it's interesting and worth a read. -- Wes Continue Reading …
Simon Blackburn vs Sam Harris: Can Science Tell us Right from Wrong?
In a debate with Patricia Churchland, Peter Singer, Sam Harris, and Lawrence Krauss, Simon Blackburn explains why Harris simply has it wrong on whether science can provide substantive guidance on morality: https://youtu.be/qtH3Q54T-M8 There is no doubt, he notes, that "science can inform our values" (and I would add that this goes trivially for many other types of Continue Reading …