You can accuse Sam Harris of a lot of things, but being a bad writer is not one of them. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I basically agree but think his manner of expression makes life too easy for his critics, and sometimes I disagree. But I always feel like I understand perfectly what he believes and why he believes it. I have also read enough of his writing and have seen enough of his public appearances to feel confident that he is in no way motivated by bigotry or Islamophobia. (Spare me the relentless out-of-context quotations that are meant to prove otherwise and the indignant self-righteousness with which those quotations are presented.)
In Tuesday’s post I lamented that crazies on the left try to shut down all criticism of Islam with casual charges of bigotry, while crazies on the right show that such charges are often entirely correct. I also remarked that I was generally more concerned about the crazies on the right. As obnoxious as the far left can sometimes be, the fundamental truth of American politics is that the Democratic Party cannot run away from them fast enough. The far right, on the other hand, is currently in complete control of the Republican Party.
But Harris is the target of so much vitriol I have come to think that some of his critics fully deserve the label “crazy.” A case in point is Marek Sullivan, who believes he has caught Harris contradicting himself:
A basic premise of philosophical logic is that two contradictory propositions cannot both be true. If I put a cat in a box and close the lid, and ask you whether the cat is alive or not, there’s only one `true’ answer: it’s either dead or alive. It can’t be somewhere in between. … I am concerned that famous neuroscientist and atheist Sam Harris has entered this reality. This is a plea for him to reach out and explain how things look from the other side in a way we can actually understand.
The trouble is, I’m not sure if Sullivan understands what a contradiction is. Here’s one of his examples:
This is not the first time Harris has baffled and puzzled with his rhetorical Janus-facedness. According to his extended 1Response to controversy’, he has `never written or spoken in support of the war in Iraq’. But here he is in 2004, writing for the Washington Times: `However mixed or misguided our intentions were in launching this war, we are attempting, at considerable cost to ourselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people’. Sound like support for the war? That’s because it is.
Actually, no, that doesn’t sound at all like support for the war. What Harris wrote sounds like support for our intentions. Where’s the contradiction in saying that the war was misguided but our intentions were good?
Here’s another of Sullivan’s examples:
In his blog article `Why don’t I criticize Israel?’ Harris begins with an immunising statement seemingly laying out his most fundamental position on Israel:
I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I think it is obscene, irrational and unjustifiable to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there’s a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible.
Fair enough. But obviously, that’s not all he has to say:
Though I just said that I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state, the justification for such a state is rather easy to find. We need look no further than the fact that the rest of the world has shown itself eager to murder the Jews at almost every opportunity. So, if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, it certainly should be a Jewish state.
Note that these paragraphs are not complementary poles of a dialectical argument whose interaction can yield a Hegelian synthesis, a third term that pushes knowledge forward. They are flatly contradictory and incompatible. On one hand a state organized around a religion is `unjustifiable’, and the other `if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, it certainly should be a Jewish state’. Ergo, a state organized around a religion is justifiable. The second term simply reverses the first.
Flatly contradictory? What? Where’s the contradiction in saying that we shouldn’t have states organized around religion, but the Jews have a stronger case for such a state than do other religions?
All of Sullivan’s examples are like that. Harris is mostly condemnatory of Ted Cruz, but also thinks on one narrow issue he raises a reasonable point. Contradiction! Harris does not think that Muslims in general support extremist ideologies, but also thinks that ISIS finds ample justification for their views in the Quran and the hadith. Contradiction! It’s complete madness.
For the crazy left, it’s not enough just to say your opponent is wrong and to give your reasons for thinking so. No, you have to go straight to calling your opponent a bigot and an idiot. Which is unfortunate, since it makes it that much harder to call out genuine bigotry and genuine stupidity. Sullivan could have written a more civilized essay criticizing the substance of what Harris said. He might even have had my support on a few things. I think Harris’ remarks about Obama, quoted in the article, are entirely ridiculous, for example. Instead Sullivan chose to make a fool himself banging on about philosophical logic and Schrodinger’s cat.
Wait a second! Earlier I was defending Harris but now I’m criticizing him? No doubt Sullivan will accuse me of contradicting myself.
Now, ordinarily I might simply have ignored Sullivan’s essay. It was posted at CounterPunch, which is mostly a repository for the sort of left-wing extremism that makes you understand why people vote for Republicans. The site was founded by Alexander Cockburn, who, in addition to many other intellectual sins, once wrote a sleazy tirade against chessplayers. So I don’t really expect calm reflection and cogent argumentation from them.
But I read this article because P. Z. Myers linked to it. Favorably. And that’s annoying, because I expect better from him. I get it that he doesn’t think much of Harris, but that’s not justification for linking to just any old brain-dead criticism of him.
In this case it is he, and not Harris, who emerges with a black eye.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1OWExRg
You can accuse Sam Harris of a lot of things, but being a bad writer is not one of them. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I basically agree but think his manner of expression makes life too easy for his critics, and sometimes I disagree. But I always feel like I understand perfectly what he believes and why he believes it. I have also read enough of his writing and have seen enough of his public appearances to feel confident that he is in no way motivated by bigotry or Islamophobia. (Spare me the relentless out-of-context quotations that are meant to prove otherwise and the indignant self-righteousness with which those quotations are presented.)
In Tuesday’s post I lamented that crazies on the left try to shut down all criticism of Islam with casual charges of bigotry, while crazies on the right show that such charges are often entirely correct. I also remarked that I was generally more concerned about the crazies on the right. As obnoxious as the far left can sometimes be, the fundamental truth of American politics is that the Democratic Party cannot run away from them fast enough. The far right, on the other hand, is currently in complete control of the Republican Party.
But Harris is the target of so much vitriol I have come to think that some of his critics fully deserve the label “crazy.” A case in point is Marek Sullivan, who believes he has caught Harris contradicting himself:
A basic premise of philosophical logic is that two contradictory propositions cannot both be true. If I put a cat in a box and close the lid, and ask you whether the cat is alive or not, there’s only one `true’ answer: it’s either dead or alive. It can’t be somewhere in between. … I am concerned that famous neuroscientist and atheist Sam Harris has entered this reality. This is a plea for him to reach out and explain how things look from the other side in a way we can actually understand.
The trouble is, I’m not sure if Sullivan understands what a contradiction is. Here’s one of his examples:
This is not the first time Harris has baffled and puzzled with his rhetorical Janus-facedness. According to his extended 1Response to controversy’, he has `never written or spoken in support of the war in Iraq’. But here he is in 2004, writing for the Washington Times: `However mixed or misguided our intentions were in launching this war, we are attempting, at considerable cost to ourselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people’. Sound like support for the war? That’s because it is.
Actually, no, that doesn’t sound at all like support for the war. What Harris wrote sounds like support for our intentions. Where’s the contradiction in saying that the war was misguided but our intentions were good?
Here’s another of Sullivan’s examples:
In his blog article `Why don’t I criticize Israel?’ Harris begins with an immunising statement seemingly laying out his most fundamental position on Israel:
I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I think it is obscene, irrational and unjustifiable to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there’s a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible.
Fair enough. But obviously, that’s not all he has to say:
Though I just said that I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state, the justification for such a state is rather easy to find. We need look no further than the fact that the rest of the world has shown itself eager to murder the Jews at almost every opportunity. So, if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, it certainly should be a Jewish state.
Note that these paragraphs are not complementary poles of a dialectical argument whose interaction can yield a Hegelian synthesis, a third term that pushes knowledge forward. They are flatly contradictory and incompatible. On one hand a state organized around a religion is `unjustifiable’, and the other `if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, it certainly should be a Jewish state’. Ergo, a state organized around a religion is justifiable. The second term simply reverses the first.
Flatly contradictory? What? Where’s the contradiction in saying that we shouldn’t have states organized around religion, but the Jews have a stronger case for such a state than do other religions?
All of Sullivan’s examples are like that. Harris is mostly condemnatory of Ted Cruz, but also thinks on one narrow issue he raises a reasonable point. Contradiction! Harris does not think that Muslims in general support extremist ideologies, but also thinks that ISIS finds ample justification for their views in the Quran and the hadith. Contradiction! It’s complete madness.
For the crazy left, it’s not enough just to say your opponent is wrong and to give your reasons for thinking so. No, you have to go straight to calling your opponent a bigot and an idiot. Which is unfortunate, since it makes it that much harder to call out genuine bigotry and genuine stupidity. Sullivan could have written a more civilized essay criticizing the substance of what Harris said. He might even have had my support on a few things. I think Harris’ remarks about Obama, quoted in the article, are entirely ridiculous, for example. Instead Sullivan chose to make a fool himself banging on about philosophical logic and Schrodinger’s cat.
Wait a second! Earlier I was defending Harris but now I’m criticizing him? No doubt Sullivan will accuse me of contradicting myself.
Now, ordinarily I might simply have ignored Sullivan’s essay. It was posted at CounterPunch, which is mostly a repository for the sort of left-wing extremism that makes you understand why people vote for Republicans. The site was founded by Alexander Cockburn, who, in addition to many other intellectual sins, once wrote a sleazy tirade against chessplayers. So I don’t really expect calm reflection and cogent argumentation from them.
But I read this article because P. Z. Myers linked to it. Favorably. And that’s annoying, because I expect better from him. I get it that he doesn’t think much of Harris, but that’s not justification for linking to just any old brain-dead criticism of him.
In this case it is he, and not Harris, who emerges with a black eye.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1OWExRg
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