slug.com slug.com

4 1

When Sam Harris talks about striving for rationality, whose rationality is he referring to?

I very much enjoyed his three debates with Jordan Peterson. I’m not familiar with a universal rationality. Can you help me to understand better what he’s referring to?

Clammypollack 7 Mar 21
Share

Be part of the movement!

Welcome to the community for those who value free speech, evidence and civil discourse.

Create your free account

4 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

I just made a small summery for you:
[slug.com]

Thank you. That was very interesting and helpful.

1

Thanks for the helpful response. I appreciate it. I will look into the sites you recommend. I will tell you up front that I am not a deep thinker. When I listened to the Peterson/Harris debates, I had to replay them several times at certain points just to comprehend what they were saying. But let me give this a shot. I look at the people around us and then at events in history and I think Harris is being very optimistic and a tad naive. I highly doubt we can derive our morals from facts and observations. It would be wonderful if we could but there is such an element of irrationality, selfishness, power hunger and downright evil in humanity that we can barely stand each other in America today, much less agree on morals and we are pretty rational and civilized compared to many societies and events in history (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Taliban, Isis, etc,etc.). Example: the kid who egged the Australian pol in the back of the head. We should be able to agree that a basic moral is to do no physical harm to others, except in self defense. We do appear to accept it as a rule and we have even codified it in our criminal law. Sadly, many on the left have become so unhinged that they celebrate this kids action of hitting a man from behind because they find the man’s statements to be repugnant. Same with attacking people with MAGA hats, or even Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson lectures. This is why I am more akin to Peterson’s thinking on this. I wish Harris was right but I don’t think he is. I welcome your thoughts.

2

He's trying to uncover basic moral principles that we can all agree on. Like anything else, we should be able to derive our morals from basic facts and observations, right? This is the basis of rationality, see lesswrong.com, and is a pretty good way of figuring things out. But can we derive our morals from this multi-tool that is rationality? Sam Harris thinks we can, and his arguments must withstand some really great counterarguments. Peterson has a good critique on his website. Also, Cuck Philosophy has a good one too which is also more accessible for laymen like me

0

Rationality can br Rationalized

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:23864
Slug does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.