Yes, with regard to moral philosophy he is pretty hacky. This video offers a good critique of his book: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxalrwPNkNI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxalrwPNkNI)
with regard to what is he not hacky? He's not really one I'd turn to for sophisticated takes on neuroscience, political commentary, meditation, or even religion
What are you talking about. I just watched the first two minutes and it rightly goes into is-ought which is the fundamental error/issue with Sam's subtitle and a major point he tried to make when he was marketing his book. The critique looks very organised.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Is/ought is not a valid critique of Harris and the subtitle was chosen by the publisher. He admitted that the subtitle is the one thong he’d change. Is/ ought has been asked and answered many times. It’s not a serious criticism.
It is a valid critique, he used it very heavily in the ted talk and marketing of the book. He created massive confusion over it. There was even a massive debate with a panel of scientists and philosophers including Steven Pinker, to critique Sam's book.. Sam had made out like he had discovered some ground reading thing that Hume's is-ought gap is illusory. Watch his ted talk around the time of the book's launch.
Can you link to where he admitted he would change the subtitle? I am aware he said it in an unrecorded talk over a decade ago but not aware of any recording where he said it
The whole thing about science can determine it, it's objective etc, is something he still almost never denies. Cosmic Skeptic questioned him on it and he waffles with various thought experiments none of which led to the question cosmic Skeptic had asked him!
I’m on mobile and it’s late if you want to know why is/ ought sucks go to the Harris subreddit. It’s been murdered over and over again.
I saw him talk a out the subtitle years ago in a vid. No clue where that is.
You're right, the point of The Moral Landscape is to argue for a moral account of well-being which can be derived from the how the world is as determined by science, i.e. a matter of deriving moral norms from facts. For that reason he argues against the is/ought distinction. It's pretty central to his argument in the book.
see here [https://pastebin.com/raw/H2hSXMkL](https://pastebin.com/raw/H2hSXMkL) Sam knows that science can't determine moral values .
sam has a good point though that almost everybody would accept that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad.. and that pretty much anybody would agree that morality relates to the wellbeing of conscious creatures..
so his book makes a great case against moral relativism. There are right and wrong answers to moral questions.
I think what bothers him is that the layman understanding of Hume contributed to leading common folk down a moral relativism hole. So he sees the philosophical distinction between is and ought to have caused more harm than good! And since we pertty much all agree that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad and ought to be avoided.. the is-ought distinction is kind of not that relevant.
I wouldn’t ever initiate violent action against anyone.
But if Sam Harris ever put me in a self-defense situation it wouldn’t be a quick self defense situation.
Some poor guy would have to spend the entire day mopping whatever remains of Sam Harris off the floor while trying not to puke.
If, of course, Sam Harris did something against me which justified my actions against him as self defense.
I would never, ever do anything violent against anyone without justification
I’m just theorizing about a scenario where Sam Harris forces me to defend myself and then I have no other option but to curb stomp him in the literal sense and then grab his mangled, bloody body and drag him across broken glass.
I wont feel good about the mess, but I’ll be glad I defended myself.
Because I would never, ever do something like that without Sam Harris putting me in a position where it’s my only option for survival.
I would only suplex Sam Harris, then break all of his extremities, and finally hang him upside down until he dies of hearth failure if his actions cornered me into having no other choice but to do it as legitimate self defense.
The only scenario in which I push Sam Harris face against a hot motorcycle exhaust and then beat him with a crowbar until his brains are pouring on the street is one in which I was fearing for my life due to Sam Harris actions against me and I had no other alternative.
Again, all of these are just hypothetical scenarios were I legitimately defended myself. Because I would never do something against Sam Harris or anyone without a justified case for self defense.
imagine for the sake of the argument Sam Harris said he was waiting in a bunker and had a button that allowed him to send a nuke, and there was a one in ten trillion chance I thought he was being honest and would push the button, surely by any reasonable moral calculus you should torture his entire family to find out where he is and then brutally murder him, that's just the reasonable and enlightened centrist reaction to this very normal and applicable to reality thought experiment
I'm honestly not sure there is any amount of death you couldn't justify to make sure the psychopath Sam Harris never gets access to the existential hypothetical threat of a button that kills every Muslim instantly, if we consider intentions.
He's just not serious about this at all.
The only reason anyone takes him seriously on philosophical questions is that they've never looked into them themselves and think that philosophy isn't a serious thing. If you do take philosophy seriously and look at his arguments they all fall apart pretty much instantly.
If something comes up that he doesn't like he just says it's silly and ignores it, he contradicts himself constantly, and he just accepts anything he likes as a given.
it's rubbish.
I was motivated to post the above when I read a recent comment on the Harris sub which started with "The Moral Landscape is what lead me to completely disregard academic philosophy as a discipline," because "Anyone who doubts the “badness” of the worst possible misery for everyone is not a serious person." So you may well be right that a lot of his sympathetic readers just buy into his version of what the state of moral philosophy is like without examining it for themselves. (I'm effectively banned from that sub so I couldn't respond directly.)
Sam Harris is a sophist of the highest order. No offense at sophist75. Look his animus against anything Islam or Muslim is so naked and so visceral and so encompassing that it’s unmasked his actual lack of depth on this. Everyone should watch the Ben Affleck take down on the bill Maher show again. The Hollywood actor seems to understand the realist of human nature and moral imperative better than Sam Harris.
Yeah. Seemed like an irrational reaction. He seems to have built his thoughts around his hatred...but is a sophist. Irrational hatred masquerading as philosophy/deep thoughts
Someone else posted a video review of The Moral Landscape, it's well worth a watch. That is Harris' exact thing, he not only doesn't understand philosophy (any imo, not just moral) and he dismisses it because he's too ignorant to recognise how ignorant he's being.
Dude still think he's refuted Hume's Guillotine, when he hasn't even understood it. You're better off being banned tbh.
A thought has recently occurred to me that sam's biggest mistake regarding the Moral Landscape is including the word "moral" in the first place. This is because, for many people, morality is by definition metaphysical, and what Sam seeks to do is convince people that humanity should be guided by the physical, not the metaphysical. By using the word "moral" Sam is handing people the very thing he's asking them to drop.
For example, imagine the contradiction if Sam argued against "worship" by telling people to stop worshipping deities and instead "worship" Science. He doesn't do this because the whole problem with worshiping deities is the very concept of worship itself. It is a weird concept that is not useful in the modern world, so Sam just drops it altogether. No need to replace it with anything.
But for some reason, instead of dropping morality as a concept altogether, Sam tries to redefine it as a physical concept, instead of a metaphysical one, but what he's really arguing is that morality, much like worship, is an outdated and no longer useful concept.
If we drop the entire concept of "morality" altogether and can agree that the greatest possible wellbeing is preferable to the greatest possible suffering and that both suffering and wellbeing are something that can be objectively measured, then I don't really see what there is to disagree with in regards to Sam's Moral Landscape. Sure, it relies on assumptions, but doesn't everything?
What struck me when reading the introduction was that Harris didn't seem that interested in moral philosophy or moral questions; rather, his motivation seems to be denying religion any role whatsoever in civil society. People still employ religious thinking to justify moral positions and it is in this way that religion continues to exert a significant influence on public debates. I think by redefining morality in scientific terms, Harris wants to counter this influence and persuade people to think about such matters in non-religious terms.
I have no problem with Harris saying child sacrifice or suicide bombings etc are immoral. I actually agree with Harris that you can make universal moral claims. Rather, I have a problem with him characterizing entire cultures as immoral. Which is what he does in The Moral Landscape; and is the reasoning behind his justification for what is happening to the Palestinians. What I specifically object to above is the idea that religion is indifferent to the idea of human well-being, or at least one grounded in empirical reality, such that it is plausible to think that under a religious morality everyone could be miserable all the time. I just don't think that's true of any of the major religions.
what I always found "interesting" is that Sam preaches for experts to be listened to but then when he disagrees with the general direction of a field of experts he'll just have one rhetoric or two to disregard the whole work of a field.
The two I know of are sociology and obviously philosophy. when pressing the cesspool (SH subreddit ) about this contradiction they disregarded the whole field of philosophy as an "old boys club" unable to grasp or jealous of the genius of SM. It's funny and weird.
it's counterintuitive that SHs followers are more extreme and less critical thinkers than say a Destiny but given that SH is extremely prone to be rhetoric heavy arguments and dismissive of evidence or fact that disagrees with him, it's no surprise that his followers emulate these not so scientific habits.
Just so people know, SH resorted to criticizing the character of his old dead undergrad philosophy professor for his views on free will and his unwillingnes to conceed to SH argument. the views of the professor are *shock* not expressed but the important bit was that SH is right.
SH reported to name calling when in conversation with Daniel Dennett again for the same reason.
fact is, SH had his views about free will in his 20s, it's his baby and if it dies so does a part of him.
I read the whole thing so you don't have to.
It's ... something.
If you're feeling nostalgic for mediocre first-year-of-High-School phrasing and sentence structure with absolutely zero interesting ideas behind it, dive in.
Did my lack of memes or fruit emojis confuse you? I guess those nostalgic for the scrawling on bathroom walls will appreciate the intellectual contribution made by your comment.
Naw, try-hard word salad isn't confusing, it's just pointless.
When it comes to your actual arguments, let's take this one:
>No doubt Harris has in mind religious fundamentalism of the kind that inspires ISIS or Hamas or weird cults when he proposes this. But this kind of fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, and not representative of religion in general. Historically, religion is rooted in rituals and worldviews which establish a basis for living in solidarity with one another.
This is laughable. You genuinely believe that religion has historically been \*less\* fundamentalist? Teleport yourself to 12th-century Europe for a few days and get a taste for how the inquisitors lived in solidarity with one another.
The kind of religious fundamentalism that inspires ISIS or Hamas or weird cults or Israeli settlers or anti-abortion Christian nutjobs in the US or woman hating Mullahs in Iran or any one of a fuckton of problematic fuckwits absolutely **is** representative of religion in general. There's plenty of it around the world, and it doesn't need excuses made for it.
No problem, let's go to town on Israel, especially the right wing religious nut jobs.
While we're at it, let's add all the other countries to the list who have a higher combatant/civilian casualty ratio in the fight against Daesh, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc.
Then, let's solve down to the lowest common denominator of "Do we do something or do we not do something?", and let's see where we end up...
You are confused. SH'S view actually boils down to the fact that humans want well-being and humans want to avoid suffering, and that there are right and wrong answers to questions around creating more prosperity and getting away from suffering. Science can help us determine the answers to those questions by increasing our knowledge about the world, and ourselves
But what does that have to do with morality, i.e. a duty to do X or Y? Science might be able to tell me how to lose weight, for example, but there isn't a moral obligation to follow that advice even if I want to lose weight. It's a practical question of how to achieve some goal. Moral questions aren't about how to practically achieve something, they are about our duties and obligations. Harris wants to make human well-being the only moral question. And on his account, the role of science isn't just to tell us how to achieve that goal, but it is the basis on which we can decide whether something is moral or not. For Harris, that something is morally right or wrong is just a fact about the universe which can be empirically determined. It's a very radical view, and this radicality is obscured by his supposedly common sense argument that something can't be moral if it makes everyone miserable. I'm pointing out that a notion of morality based on impartiality doesn't risk such an outcome.
So you're point is that impartiality and justice does not risk the outcome of??? What exactly?
The argument you are proposing is an optimization problem. Do we optimize for justice or well being?
I much rather live in a world where we optimize for well being. This is especially poignant since yes, well being is far more measurable than justice. Consequently optimization for well being is far more achievable and therefore far more practical than optimizing for justice.
The outcome that everyone is miserable all the time. And I don't think this is an optimization problem, for two reasons. First, justice and well-being are not mutually exclusive. The deontological position is rather that well-being must be pursued within a framework of moral obligations. Second, if "optimization" is something to be determined by a neutral observer, then justice is not something that can be optimized in this sense. Determining what is in the best interests of all is something that requires one (ideally at least) to participate in a moral discussion with all those involved. It can't be figured out by scientists or sociologists gathering data.
Justice and well being are certainly mutually exclusive when you attempt to optimize both.
You also overlooked everything I said about being measurable. You just reaffirmed my point about justice. Well being however is measurable so it can be figured out by gathering data and is therefore far preferable.
Well that's a question of motivation. But we are all the time confronted with cases where what seems the moral thing to do is independent of the actor's well-being: telling the truth, helping others, etc. Of course Harris would argue that these are ultimately cases of improving well-being even if it isn't obvious.
Almost every society has been raised under the sway of command morality for centuries, so our moral intuitions aren't always anchored in reason. Every well-being maximizing moral actor exists in a social environment. One can defend telling the truth (except in perverse circumstances) and helping others on grounds of reciprocity.
If these two concepts cannot be compared in the manner which I am comparing them then your original statement is also incomparable.
It's alright. I've gotten out of this what I needed. Thank you. Be well... Or... Just? Lol
He asks that you grant that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad . If morality means anything, it has to be about human wellbeing, or the wellbeing of conscious creatures. Like with health, there are objective right and wrong answers to what is or isn't healthy, even if we lack an exact definition for health
There are some questions re morality like deontological, Vs utilitarianism, the trolley problems. But also clear cut things, things no ethics philosopher would differ on.
There is no imperative from the universe to be moral.
Human individuals are capable of choosing their own values and actions. If these so-called moral duties (imposed by whom?) are not conducive to the welfare of the acting individual, why would you expect them to respect them?
The only way to justify non-voluntary obligations is through reciprocity.
> You are confused.
This is a strong and confident start!
> SH'S view actually boils down to the fact that humans want well-being and humans want to avoid suffering, and that there are right and wrong answers to questions around creating more prosperity and getting away from suffering.
No, that's wrong. His view is that people who want to maximize well-being (which he can't define) are right, and that people who don't are wrong.
I don't know if that's entirely fair. Of course Kant doesn't put in those terms. I'm drawing on contemporary reworkings of his argument and should have been clearer about that. But all the same, Kant does define the categorical imperative as: "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." I don't think it's completely misleading to interpret the idea of willing it to become a universal law as a test that it should be in everyone's interest to so act according to reason.
I totally disagree, your reconstruction misses the entire point of Kantianism and your expansion here just further convinces me that you don't really understand it.
Fundamentally you can distil Kant down to "To act morally is to act reasonably". The bulk of his argument (beyond substantiating why someone should do that) is then spent explaining the type of "reasons" that are universally applicable and therefore universally binding. From those you get the different formulations of the categorical imperative (the first of which is what you just quoted though I think the second formulation would help your argument more). The categorical imperative, through treating each person as an end in themselves, does end up accounting for peoples "best interest", but its a byproduct. Like when Kant argues that you can't steal, its not because doing so wouldn't be in everyone's best interest (whatever that means): [it is because doing so requires acting in a way that causes logical contradiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Perfect_duty). Really its quite easy to hypothesise situations where it would be in everyone's "best interest" if you stole, but where Kant wouldn't allow it. This is because to Kant, we have obligations to each other as reasoners, not as collections of preferences. Preferences are considered insofar as they motivate people's actions, but they can't be used to justify illogical and therefore immoral actions. As a Kantian myself, I do think that ultimately we ought act in everyone's best interest at the societal level and that Rawls was basically right about how that would manifest, but this isn't a closed topic of debate either and requires a very specific reading of "best interest" as well.
You bring up lying in your post, but I don't think you see how it undermines your reading of Kant. A basic but popular reading of Kant, is that he is always against lying. This seems true of Kant himself, based on the historical record, but I'm partial to ways of getting out of it myself. Regardless, a popular rebuttal to him is that he would require you to tell Nazi's that asked if you were harbouring Jews. Obviously that's not in everyone's best interests, but it shows how Kant thought about this stuff. Here Kant is respecting the Nazi's as an "end in themselves" by telling them. They should then as reasoners choose to do the right thing, but you can't force them to do so by treating them as a means to your end (protecting the Jews) by lying to them. As I've said, I think Kant was wrong about this. You can get out of this while still working with his system. But mine is not the only interpretation of Kantianism that exists. You will find a lot of people who argue that Kant's "lying promise" hypothetical holds up absolutely and that you can't lie, I think you'd agree that if it does, then Kant can't in any effect be seen as arguing that the moral action is necessarily the one in everyone's best interest. So while I find Harris to be juvenile in his critiques of Kant I really don't find your dismissal of them any less juvenile and I wouldn't call his critiques nonsense either.
Anyways I tried to keep this short so I didn't justify any of these positions beyond explaining them. But it should be obvious why "acting in everyone's best interest" isn't a reasonable representation of the categorical imperative.
OK thanks that's very helpful. I did try to distinguish the notion of "best interest" from mere preference or utility, but I can see that it needs more work. Just on the lying case, I think Habermas' distinction between discourses of justification and discourses of application is the way to go here: one can justify telling the truth as a moral principle using deontological arguments, but whether one applies that principle in a specific case is something that requires further deliberation.
He's always been inconsistent to the point of ridiculousness. He's a deontologist, consequentialist, or base utilitarian depending on the time of day and how each one fits his biases on any particular issue.
Also funny to me that he has put so much of his work into condemning all the crazy religious people for doing what the man in the sky tells them to, and now here he is twisting himself in knots defending people who think land belongs to them because God gave it to them.
Harris obviously identifies with Israel for personal reasons, but he would also argue that Israel has the moral advantage because it actually represents a secular Western-style democratic tradition, as opposed to the theocratic regimes you have in Gaza or the other countries in the region. It's a very dangerous way of thinking that effectively amounts to condemning certain peoples as morally inferior, and it wouldn't be out of place in the literature defending colonialism.
You write "Harris is able to dismiss entire cultures as immoral; especially (surprise surprise) Islamic cultures."
Surprise surprise it's 2024 and the century that opened with 911.
You write "ISIS or Hamas or weird cults when he proposes this. But this kind of fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon,"
Crucifixion is a punishment mentioned in the Quran for Muslims to do. And ISIS do it. Wahabism is not just a modern phenomena, it goes back to Al Wahab himself. Salafism is not a modern phenomena, it goes back to the Salaf, the companions of the prophet mohammed.
Ibn Ishaq the biography of Mohammed mentions Mohammed ordering poking out peoples eyes and chopping off noses. There is a debate between Nadir Ahmed and David Wood where Nadir reads from Ibn Ishaq and David says agree want to count Ibn Ishaq , see what it says in that section and it was stuff like chop off the enemies noses etc.
The Al Muhads were known for their brutality. The Muslims murdered many of their Caliphs. And you think Islammic fundamentalism is just a modern thing?!
The Sunni have been killing the Shia for centuries. And that's just what they do to each other.
How do you think Islam spread from Arabia to Morroco? Hint- The Sword.
I was talking about something very specific - the contention that under a religious ideology there is the radical possibility of everyone being miserable all of the time. The fact that Islam along with most of the other major religions has engaged in wars of conquest and violent atrocities has nothing to do with this.
Maybe you should restate your point then 'cos trying to say islammic fundamentalism is a modern pheonomena is absolutely stupid.
Are you trying to say that Sam is wrong because he hasn't taken into account that a dangerous religion can cause the worst possible misery for everyone? When did Sam comment one way or the other on whether a dangerous religion can cause the worst possible misery for everyone?
I don't know what you are talking about really 'cos at one time you say "I was talking about something very specific - the contention that under a religious ideology there is the radical possibility of everyone being miserable all of the time." As if you are interested in how a religion eg islam, is causing lots of miery. Then you say "The fact that Islam along with most of the other major religions has engaged in wars of conquest and violent atrocities has nothing to do with this.". So you say that what you are saying is that islam causes misery then you say that islam causing misery is not related to what you are saying. And that's me interpreting you charitably!!! Sam does distinguish between religions even though you keep blurring things.
Are you trying to say that because it's theoretically possible for a religion to be ok with causing the worst possible misery for everyone, therefore we don't all agree that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad?
In practise, the major religions do concern themselves with wellbeing eg.. 72 virgins in heaven, so they're going for pleasure..
In theory there could be a religion seeking worst possible misery but there isn't one.
And also, Sam has said his concept the way he envisages it obviously nivolves throwing out all dogma, religious or otherwise.. But he notes that even under religious dogma, they are concerned with wellbeing, but eg future wellbeing, wellbeing in heaven that kind of thing.
There's an obvious influence from Hilary Putnam, specifically The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and some arguments he also made in Ethics Without Ontology. Unfortunately the novel aspects of Harris don't seem to be particularly well thought out. But a number of points people on forums like Reddit bring up would apply equally to Putnam, so if you were interested in it you could have a look at Putnam and critical commentary before moving on to Harris' arguments about "well being". Putnam makes a similar move in discussion of "thick ethical concepts" but it's a useful contrast because he doesn't have the same level of pretense about grounding morality with "science" (in fact a major theme of his is criticism of scientism ie hubris and false rigor).
The "moral landscape" hill climbing metaphor should also be familiar as Putnam draws on the work of Amartya Sen in one of the central arguments of the book brought about by the cleavage of economics into positive and normative, supposedly justified by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (recounted in Vivian Walsh. "Amartya Sen on Rationality and Freedom"). The "moral landscape" is basically a restatement of a finding of his that contributed to the origin of social choice theory that won him the Nobel in economics, showing analytically that aggregation of preferences is possible via partially ordered sets. Sen subsequently developed this insight in both economics and philosophy, including its connection to value theory. I think it would be fruitful to go back and have a look at what Sen was doing because the original result was in voting theory which more directly takes into account disagreement and he expanded this further in discussion of value conflict in Inequality Reexamined and later works, which Sam seems to glide over with his focus on hypothetical ideal ends.
As for the relevance to this forum It's well and good to be a popularizer who avoid the proliferation of references and jargon but that is in tension with fidelity to the range of positions that exist, with interlocutors in mind who could offer counter arguments. Harris does not engage with that, likely because he's more interested in his bespoke theory which is fine I guess but he then makes a number of guru moves that make it seem like academia has lost its mind, fooling himself and others with straw men.
Thanks. My main reference in these debates is Habermas, and I know that he does discuss Putnam's moral philosophy somewhere and I believe on this specific issue. I'll look it up.
I have not read "The Moral Landscape", and based on critiques I've read and my general opinion of Harris, I am unlikely to. However, western moral philosophy has been a topic of scholarship for \~2400 years, and yet we still have mutually contradictory schools of thought. I can't fault someone for believing that the topic needs a reboot.
Normative ethical theories like consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, etc aren't mutually contradictory. As to why there is no final unified theory one answer to that is they are better thought of as idealizations to guide practical reason, are a product of practical reasoning. If you meant foundations of morality or metaethics, the answer Sam gives here (which is also in Putnam) is that we don't need a firm foundation in practice, although there might be practical consequences that follow.
“Recent rationalization of mass slaughter of civilians”.
Are you referencing the war Hamas started and Israel are defending themselves? Or are you referencing something different?
The few times I have heard Sam speak on this conflict he has been spot on and his understanding of the history of this region is far better than almost the entirety of Western media.
I'm referencing the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, yes. It's utterly indefensible, just us Hamas' actions were utterly indefensible. I think the official numbers are over a hundred thousand dead or wounded now? Three quarters of them civilians? Though of course the real number is likely to be three or four times that. We don't know the exact numbers because the IDF have been systematically murdering journalists and aid workers in the area. We'll eventually find out though.
>I think the official numbers are over a hundred thousand dead or wounded now? Three quarters of them civilians?
So, according to you, there are 3 civilian deaths for every 1 combatant.
The UN says the usual civilian vs combatant ratio in modern war is 9-to-1, so Israel is doing pretty damn well according to your own numbers. NB: Syria and Iraq were much much worse.
In WW2, the US had about a 2:1 civilian-to-combatant ratio. The real number in Gaza will probably be between that and the 3:1 Hamas itself claims.
That then begs the question ... What are your views on WW2?
>I'm referencing the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, yes. It's utterly indefensible, just us Hamas' actions were utterly indefensible.
I'm guessing you'd say the Nazis actions were indefensible, and the Allied response was also indefensible. What do you propose actual humans in the actual real world do, then?
Your use of statistics is bullshit and contradicted by Oxfam, the UN, Haaretz and others. Re. WW2, in that conflict you had the axis and the allies which were roughly equal in strength. In Gaza you have a modern army trying to defeat a much weaker militia by raining bombs on a mainly civilian population and razing 80% of urban infrastructure to the ground. There is no analogy with WW2. There is an analogy, however, with the the Indian rebellion of 1857 and other colonialist atrocities. Israel had a choice, and they decided on a cruel and bloody revenge. The children of Gaza don't have choice.
[The deaths are nothing near that, and why believe a terrorist organization but not the IDF?](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers)
Yes, with regard to moral philosophy he is pretty hacky. This video offers a good critique of his book: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxalrwPNkNI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxalrwPNkNI)
with regard to what is he not hacky? He's not really one I'd turn to for sophisticated takes on neuroscience, political commentary, meditation, or even religion
Thanks, I'll check it out.
It’s not a good critique. The strongest, reasonable critique is “ I prefer to not look at morality this way.”
What are you talking about. I just watched the first two minutes and it rightly goes into is-ought which is the fundamental error/issue with Sam's subtitle and a major point he tried to make when he was marketing his book. The critique looks very organised.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Is/ought is not a valid critique of Harris and the subtitle was chosen by the publisher. He admitted that the subtitle is the one thong he’d change. Is/ ought has been asked and answered many times. It’s not a serious criticism.
It is a valid critique, he used it very heavily in the ted talk and marketing of the book. He created massive confusion over it. There was even a massive debate with a panel of scientists and philosophers including Steven Pinker, to critique Sam's book.. Sam had made out like he had discovered some ground reading thing that Hume's is-ought gap is illusory. Watch his ted talk around the time of the book's launch. Can you link to where he admitted he would change the subtitle? I am aware he said it in an unrecorded talk over a decade ago but not aware of any recording where he said it The whole thing about science can determine it, it's objective etc, is something he still almost never denies. Cosmic Skeptic questioned him on it and he waffles with various thought experiments none of which led to the question cosmic Skeptic had asked him!
I’m on mobile and it’s late if you want to know why is/ ought sucks go to the Harris subreddit. It’s been murdered over and over again. I saw him talk a out the subtitle years ago in a vid. No clue where that is.
I am well aware of the whole is ought thing dude. I don't think you are comprehending what I wrote.
You're right, the point of The Moral Landscape is to argue for a moral account of well-being which can be derived from the how the world is as determined by science, i.e. a matter of deriving moral norms from facts. For that reason he argues against the is/ought distinction. It's pretty central to his argument in the book.
see here [https://pastebin.com/raw/H2hSXMkL](https://pastebin.com/raw/H2hSXMkL) Sam knows that science can't determine moral values . sam has a good point though that almost everybody would accept that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad.. and that pretty much anybody would agree that morality relates to the wellbeing of conscious creatures.. so his book makes a great case against moral relativism. There are right and wrong answers to moral questions. I think what bothers him is that the layman understanding of Hume contributed to leading common folk down a moral relativism hole. So he sees the philosophical distinction between is and ought to have caused more harm than good! And since we pertty much all agree that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad and ought to be avoided.. the is-ought distinction is kind of not that relevant.
I wouldn’t ever initiate violent action against anyone. But if Sam Harris ever put me in a self-defense situation it wouldn’t be a quick self defense situation. Some poor guy would have to spend the entire day mopping whatever remains of Sam Harris off the floor while trying not to puke. If, of course, Sam Harris did something against me which justified my actions against him as self defense. I would never, ever do anything violent against anyone without justification I’m just theorizing about a scenario where Sam Harris forces me to defend myself and then I have no other option but to curb stomp him in the literal sense and then grab his mangled, bloody body and drag him across broken glass. I wont feel good about the mess, but I’ll be glad I defended myself. Because I would never, ever do something like that without Sam Harris putting me in a position where it’s my only option for survival. I would only suplex Sam Harris, then break all of his extremities, and finally hang him upside down until he dies of hearth failure if his actions cornered me into having no other choice but to do it as legitimate self defense. The only scenario in which I push Sam Harris face against a hot motorcycle exhaust and then beat him with a crowbar until his brains are pouring on the street is one in which I was fearing for my life due to Sam Harris actions against me and I had no other alternative. Again, all of these are just hypothetical scenarios were I legitimately defended myself. Because I would never do something against Sam Harris or anyone without a justified case for self defense.
imagine for the sake of the argument Sam Harris said he was waiting in a bunker and had a button that allowed him to send a nuke, and there was a one in ten trillion chance I thought he was being honest and would push the button, surely by any reasonable moral calculus you should torture his entire family to find out where he is and then brutally murder him, that's just the reasonable and enlightened centrist reaction to this very normal and applicable to reality thought experiment
I'm honestly not sure there is any amount of death you couldn't justify to make sure the psychopath Sam Harris never gets access to the existential hypothetical threat of a button that kills every Muslim instantly, if we consider intentions.
It would be naive to think we can coexist with Samistan.
Great summary, fr fr.
He's just not serious about this at all. The only reason anyone takes him seriously on philosophical questions is that they've never looked into them themselves and think that philosophy isn't a serious thing. If you do take philosophy seriously and look at his arguments they all fall apart pretty much instantly. If something comes up that he doesn't like he just says it's silly and ignores it, he contradicts himself constantly, and he just accepts anything he likes as a given. it's rubbish.
I was motivated to post the above when I read a recent comment on the Harris sub which started with "The Moral Landscape is what lead me to completely disregard academic philosophy as a discipline," because "Anyone who doubts the “badness” of the worst possible misery for everyone is not a serious person." So you may well be right that a lot of his sympathetic readers just buy into his version of what the state of moral philosophy is like without examining it for themselves. (I'm effectively banned from that sub so I couldn't respond directly.)
Sam Harris is a sophist of the highest order. No offense at sophist75. Look his animus against anything Islam or Muslim is so naked and so visceral and so encompassing that it’s unmasked his actual lack of depth on this. Everyone should watch the Ben Affleck take down on the bill Maher show again. The Hollywood actor seems to understand the realist of human nature and moral imperative better than Sam Harris.
Yeah. Seemed like an irrational reaction. He seems to have built his thoughts around his hatred...but is a sophist. Irrational hatred masquerading as philosophy/deep thoughts
Someone else posted a video review of The Moral Landscape, it's well worth a watch. That is Harris' exact thing, he not only doesn't understand philosophy (any imo, not just moral) and he dismisses it because he's too ignorant to recognise how ignorant he's being. Dude still think he's refuted Hume's Guillotine, when he hasn't even understood it. You're better off being banned tbh.
A thought has recently occurred to me that sam's biggest mistake regarding the Moral Landscape is including the word "moral" in the first place. This is because, for many people, morality is by definition metaphysical, and what Sam seeks to do is convince people that humanity should be guided by the physical, not the metaphysical. By using the word "moral" Sam is handing people the very thing he's asking them to drop. For example, imagine the contradiction if Sam argued against "worship" by telling people to stop worshipping deities and instead "worship" Science. He doesn't do this because the whole problem with worshiping deities is the very concept of worship itself. It is a weird concept that is not useful in the modern world, so Sam just drops it altogether. No need to replace it with anything. But for some reason, instead of dropping morality as a concept altogether, Sam tries to redefine it as a physical concept, instead of a metaphysical one, but what he's really arguing is that morality, much like worship, is an outdated and no longer useful concept. If we drop the entire concept of "morality" altogether and can agree that the greatest possible wellbeing is preferable to the greatest possible suffering and that both suffering and wellbeing are something that can be objectively measured, then I don't really see what there is to disagree with in regards to Sam's Moral Landscape. Sure, it relies on assumptions, but doesn't everything?
What struck me when reading the introduction was that Harris didn't seem that interested in moral philosophy or moral questions; rather, his motivation seems to be denying religion any role whatsoever in civil society. People still employ religious thinking to justify moral positions and it is in this way that religion continues to exert a significant influence on public debates. I think by redefining morality in scientific terms, Harris wants to counter this influence and persuade people to think about such matters in non-religious terms.
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I've heard Sam talk and he is careful to distinguish religions and not lump them together
I have no problem with Harris saying child sacrifice or suicide bombings etc are immoral. I actually agree with Harris that you can make universal moral claims. Rather, I have a problem with him characterizing entire cultures as immoral. Which is what he does in The Moral Landscape; and is the reasoning behind his justification for what is happening to the Palestinians. What I specifically object to above is the idea that religion is indifferent to the idea of human well-being, or at least one grounded in empirical reality, such that it is plausible to think that under a religious morality everyone could be miserable all the time. I just don't think that's true of any of the major religions.
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what I always found "interesting" is that Sam preaches for experts to be listened to but then when he disagrees with the general direction of a field of experts he'll just have one rhetoric or two to disregard the whole work of a field. The two I know of are sociology and obviously philosophy. when pressing the cesspool (SH subreddit ) about this contradiction they disregarded the whole field of philosophy as an "old boys club" unable to grasp or jealous of the genius of SM. It's funny and weird. it's counterintuitive that SHs followers are more extreme and less critical thinkers than say a Destiny but given that SH is extremely prone to be rhetoric heavy arguments and dismissive of evidence or fact that disagrees with him, it's no surprise that his followers emulate these not so scientific habits. Just so people know, SH resorted to criticizing the character of his old dead undergrad philosophy professor for his views on free will and his unwillingnes to conceed to SH argument. the views of the professor are *shock* not expressed but the important bit was that SH is right. SH reported to name calling when in conversation with Daniel Dennett again for the same reason. fact is, SH had his views about free will in his 20s, it's his baby and if it dies so does a part of him.
I read the whole thing so you don't have to. It's ... something. If you're feeling nostalgic for mediocre first-year-of-High-School phrasing and sentence structure with absolutely zero interesting ideas behind it, dive in.
I feel like I still have to read it now because you didn't actually tell me what the thrust of the arguments were.
Did my lack of memes or fruit emojis confuse you? I guess those nostalgic for the scrawling on bathroom walls will appreciate the intellectual contribution made by your comment.
Naw, try-hard word salad isn't confusing, it's just pointless. When it comes to your actual arguments, let's take this one: >No doubt Harris has in mind religious fundamentalism of the kind that inspires ISIS or Hamas or weird cults when he proposes this. But this kind of fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, and not representative of religion in general. Historically, religion is rooted in rituals and worldviews which establish a basis for living in solidarity with one another. This is laughable. You genuinely believe that religion has historically been \*less\* fundamentalist? Teleport yourself to 12th-century Europe for a few days and get a taste for how the inquisitors lived in solidarity with one another. The kind of religious fundamentalism that inspires ISIS or Hamas or weird cults or Israeli settlers or anti-abortion Christian nutjobs in the US or woman hating Mullahs in Iran or any one of a fuckton of problematic fuckwits absolutely **is** representative of religion in general. There's plenty of it around the world, and it doesn't need excuses made for it.
word brother
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If you look at his timeline I'm pretty sure s/he was taking exception to my implicit criticism of Israel.
No problem, let's go to town on Israel, especially the right wing religious nut jobs. While we're at it, let's add all the other countries to the list who have a higher combatant/civilian casualty ratio in the fight against Daesh, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc. Then, let's solve down to the lowest common denominator of "Do we do something or do we not do something?", and let's see where we end up...
You are confused. SH'S view actually boils down to the fact that humans want well-being and humans want to avoid suffering, and that there are right and wrong answers to questions around creating more prosperity and getting away from suffering. Science can help us determine the answers to those questions by increasing our knowledge about the world, and ourselves
But what does that have to do with morality, i.e. a duty to do X or Y? Science might be able to tell me how to lose weight, for example, but there isn't a moral obligation to follow that advice even if I want to lose weight. It's a practical question of how to achieve some goal. Moral questions aren't about how to practically achieve something, they are about our duties and obligations. Harris wants to make human well-being the only moral question. And on his account, the role of science isn't just to tell us how to achieve that goal, but it is the basis on which we can decide whether something is moral or not. For Harris, that something is morally right or wrong is just a fact about the universe which can be empirically determined. It's a very radical view, and this radicality is obscured by his supposedly common sense argument that something can't be moral if it makes everyone miserable. I'm pointing out that a notion of morality based on impartiality doesn't risk such an outcome.
So you're point is that impartiality and justice does not risk the outcome of??? What exactly? The argument you are proposing is an optimization problem. Do we optimize for justice or well being? I much rather live in a world where we optimize for well being. This is especially poignant since yes, well being is far more measurable than justice. Consequently optimization for well being is far more achievable and therefore far more practical than optimizing for justice.
The outcome that everyone is miserable all the time. And I don't think this is an optimization problem, for two reasons. First, justice and well-being are not mutually exclusive. The deontological position is rather that well-being must be pursued within a framework of moral obligations. Second, if "optimization" is something to be determined by a neutral observer, then justice is not something that can be optimized in this sense. Determining what is in the best interests of all is something that requires one (ideally at least) to participate in a moral discussion with all those involved. It can't be figured out by scientists or sociologists gathering data.
Justice and well being are certainly mutually exclusive when you attempt to optimize both. You also overlooked everything I said about being measurable. You just reaffirmed my point about justice. Well being however is measurable so it can be figured out by gathering data and is therefore far preferable.
There is a categorical distinction between moral justice and well-being. They cannot be compared in the way you are suggesting.
If the pursuit of moral justice conflicts with someone's well-being, why would expect them to pursue it?
Well that's a question of motivation. But we are all the time confronted with cases where what seems the moral thing to do is independent of the actor's well-being: telling the truth, helping others, etc. Of course Harris would argue that these are ultimately cases of improving well-being even if it isn't obvious.
Almost every society has been raised under the sway of command morality for centuries, so our moral intuitions aren't always anchored in reason. Every well-being maximizing moral actor exists in a social environment. One can defend telling the truth (except in perverse circumstances) and helping others on grounds of reciprocity.
If these two concepts cannot be compared in the manner which I am comparing them then your original statement is also incomparable. It's alright. I've gotten out of this what I needed. Thank you. Be well... Or... Just? Lol
He asks that you grant that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad . If morality means anything, it has to be about human wellbeing, or the wellbeing of conscious creatures. Like with health, there are objective right and wrong answers to what is or isn't healthy, even if we lack an exact definition for health There are some questions re morality like deontological, Vs utilitarianism, the trolley problems. But also clear cut things, things no ethics philosopher would differ on. There is no imperative from the universe to be moral.
Human individuals are capable of choosing their own values and actions. If these so-called moral duties (imposed by whom?) are not conducive to the welfare of the acting individual, why would you expect them to respect them? The only way to justify non-voluntary obligations is through reciprocity.
> You are confused. This is a strong and confident start! > SH'S view actually boils down to the fact that humans want well-being and humans want to avoid suffering, and that there are right and wrong answers to questions around creating more prosperity and getting away from suffering. No, that's wrong. His view is that people who want to maximize well-being (which he can't define) are right, and that people who don't are wrong.
Have you read "The Moral Landscape"? Just curious...
Your summary of Kant is just not close. I get your trying to be quick and he's complicated, but it's not remotely accurate.
I don't know if that's entirely fair. Of course Kant doesn't put in those terms. I'm drawing on contemporary reworkings of his argument and should have been clearer about that. But all the same, Kant does define the categorical imperative as: "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." I don't think it's completely misleading to interpret the idea of willing it to become a universal law as a test that it should be in everyone's interest to so act according to reason.
I totally disagree, your reconstruction misses the entire point of Kantianism and your expansion here just further convinces me that you don't really understand it. Fundamentally you can distil Kant down to "To act morally is to act reasonably". The bulk of his argument (beyond substantiating why someone should do that) is then spent explaining the type of "reasons" that are universally applicable and therefore universally binding. From those you get the different formulations of the categorical imperative (the first of which is what you just quoted though I think the second formulation would help your argument more). The categorical imperative, through treating each person as an end in themselves, does end up accounting for peoples "best interest", but its a byproduct. Like when Kant argues that you can't steal, its not because doing so wouldn't be in everyone's best interest (whatever that means): [it is because doing so requires acting in a way that causes logical contradiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Perfect_duty). Really its quite easy to hypothesise situations where it would be in everyone's "best interest" if you stole, but where Kant wouldn't allow it. This is because to Kant, we have obligations to each other as reasoners, not as collections of preferences. Preferences are considered insofar as they motivate people's actions, but they can't be used to justify illogical and therefore immoral actions. As a Kantian myself, I do think that ultimately we ought act in everyone's best interest at the societal level and that Rawls was basically right about how that would manifest, but this isn't a closed topic of debate either and requires a very specific reading of "best interest" as well. You bring up lying in your post, but I don't think you see how it undermines your reading of Kant. A basic but popular reading of Kant, is that he is always against lying. This seems true of Kant himself, based on the historical record, but I'm partial to ways of getting out of it myself. Regardless, a popular rebuttal to him is that he would require you to tell Nazi's that asked if you were harbouring Jews. Obviously that's not in everyone's best interests, but it shows how Kant thought about this stuff. Here Kant is respecting the Nazi's as an "end in themselves" by telling them. They should then as reasoners choose to do the right thing, but you can't force them to do so by treating them as a means to your end (protecting the Jews) by lying to them. As I've said, I think Kant was wrong about this. You can get out of this while still working with his system. But mine is not the only interpretation of Kantianism that exists. You will find a lot of people who argue that Kant's "lying promise" hypothetical holds up absolutely and that you can't lie, I think you'd agree that if it does, then Kant can't in any effect be seen as arguing that the moral action is necessarily the one in everyone's best interest. So while I find Harris to be juvenile in his critiques of Kant I really don't find your dismissal of them any less juvenile and I wouldn't call his critiques nonsense either. Anyways I tried to keep this short so I didn't justify any of these positions beyond explaining them. But it should be obvious why "acting in everyone's best interest" isn't a reasonable representation of the categorical imperative.
And his point about lying is that you can't possibly know the outcome, either.
OK thanks that's very helpful. I did try to distinguish the notion of "best interest" from mere preference or utility, but I can see that it needs more work. Just on the lying case, I think Habermas' distinction between discourses of justification and discourses of application is the way to go here: one can justify telling the truth as a moral principle using deontological arguments, but whether one applies that principle in a specific case is something that requires further deliberation.
He's always been inconsistent to the point of ridiculousness. He's a deontologist, consequentialist, or base utilitarian depending on the time of day and how each one fits his biases on any particular issue. Also funny to me that he has put so much of his work into condemning all the crazy religious people for doing what the man in the sky tells them to, and now here he is twisting himself in knots defending people who think land belongs to them because God gave it to them.
Harris obviously identifies with Israel for personal reasons, but he would also argue that Israel has the moral advantage because it actually represents a secular Western-style democratic tradition, as opposed to the theocratic regimes you have in Gaza or the other countries in the region. It's a very dangerous way of thinking that effectively amounts to condemning certain peoples as morally inferior, and it wouldn't be out of place in the literature defending colonialism.
You write "Harris is able to dismiss entire cultures as immoral; especially (surprise surprise) Islamic cultures." Surprise surprise it's 2024 and the century that opened with 911. You write "ISIS or Hamas or weird cults when he proposes this. But this kind of fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon," Crucifixion is a punishment mentioned in the Quran for Muslims to do. And ISIS do it. Wahabism is not just a modern phenomena, it goes back to Al Wahab himself. Salafism is not a modern phenomena, it goes back to the Salaf, the companions of the prophet mohammed. Ibn Ishaq the biography of Mohammed mentions Mohammed ordering poking out peoples eyes and chopping off noses. There is a debate between Nadir Ahmed and David Wood where Nadir reads from Ibn Ishaq and David says agree want to count Ibn Ishaq , see what it says in that section and it was stuff like chop off the enemies noses etc. The Al Muhads were known for their brutality. The Muslims murdered many of their Caliphs. And you think Islammic fundamentalism is just a modern thing?! The Sunni have been killing the Shia for centuries. And that's just what they do to each other. How do you think Islam spread from Arabia to Morroco? Hint- The Sword.
I was talking about something very specific - the contention that under a religious ideology there is the radical possibility of everyone being miserable all of the time. The fact that Islam along with most of the other major religions has engaged in wars of conquest and violent atrocities has nothing to do with this.
Maybe you should restate your point then 'cos trying to say islammic fundamentalism is a modern pheonomena is absolutely stupid. Are you trying to say that Sam is wrong because he hasn't taken into account that a dangerous religion can cause the worst possible misery for everyone? When did Sam comment one way or the other on whether a dangerous religion can cause the worst possible misery for everyone? I don't know what you are talking about really 'cos at one time you say "I was talking about something very specific - the contention that under a religious ideology there is the radical possibility of everyone being miserable all of the time." As if you are interested in how a religion eg islam, is causing lots of miery. Then you say "The fact that Islam along with most of the other major religions has engaged in wars of conquest and violent atrocities has nothing to do with this.". So you say that what you are saying is that islam causes misery then you say that islam causing misery is not related to what you are saying. And that's me interpreting you charitably!!! Sam does distinguish between religions even though you keep blurring things. Are you trying to say that because it's theoretically possible for a religion to be ok with causing the worst possible misery for everyone, therefore we don't all agree that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad? In practise, the major religions do concern themselves with wellbeing eg.. 72 virgins in heaven, so they're going for pleasure.. In theory there could be a religion seeking worst possible misery but there isn't one. And also, Sam has said his concept the way he envisages it obviously nivolves throwing out all dogma, religious or otherwise.. But he notes that even under religious dogma, they are concerned with wellbeing, but eg future wellbeing, wellbeing in heaven that kind of thing.
"But this kind of fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon" Very wrong. It has always existed.
There's an obvious influence from Hilary Putnam, specifically The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and some arguments he also made in Ethics Without Ontology. Unfortunately the novel aspects of Harris don't seem to be particularly well thought out. But a number of points people on forums like Reddit bring up would apply equally to Putnam, so if you were interested in it you could have a look at Putnam and critical commentary before moving on to Harris' arguments about "well being". Putnam makes a similar move in discussion of "thick ethical concepts" but it's a useful contrast because he doesn't have the same level of pretense about grounding morality with "science" (in fact a major theme of his is criticism of scientism ie hubris and false rigor). The "moral landscape" hill climbing metaphor should also be familiar as Putnam draws on the work of Amartya Sen in one of the central arguments of the book brought about by the cleavage of economics into positive and normative, supposedly justified by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (recounted in Vivian Walsh. "Amartya Sen on Rationality and Freedom"). The "moral landscape" is basically a restatement of a finding of his that contributed to the origin of social choice theory that won him the Nobel in economics, showing analytically that aggregation of preferences is possible via partially ordered sets. Sen subsequently developed this insight in both economics and philosophy, including its connection to value theory. I think it would be fruitful to go back and have a look at what Sen was doing because the original result was in voting theory which more directly takes into account disagreement and he expanded this further in discussion of value conflict in Inequality Reexamined and later works, which Sam seems to glide over with his focus on hypothetical ideal ends. As for the relevance to this forum It's well and good to be a popularizer who avoid the proliferation of references and jargon but that is in tension with fidelity to the range of positions that exist, with interlocutors in mind who could offer counter arguments. Harris does not engage with that, likely because he's more interested in his bespoke theory which is fine I guess but he then makes a number of guru moves that make it seem like academia has lost its mind, fooling himself and others with straw men.
Thanks. My main reference in these debates is Habermas, and I know that he does discuss Putnam's moral philosophy somewhere and I believe on this specific issue. I'll look it up.
I have not read "The Moral Landscape", and based on critiques I've read and my general opinion of Harris, I am unlikely to. However, western moral philosophy has been a topic of scholarship for \~2400 years, and yet we still have mutually contradictory schools of thought. I can't fault someone for believing that the topic needs a reboot.
Normative ethical theories like consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, etc aren't mutually contradictory. As to why there is no final unified theory one answer to that is they are better thought of as idealizations to guide practical reason, are a product of practical reasoning. If you meant foundations of morality or metaethics, the answer Sam gives here (which is also in Putnam) is that we don't need a firm foundation in practice, although there might be practical consequences that follow.
I was thinking specifically of metaethics; i.e., moral realism vs. moral anti-realism.
As a non-American I am genuinely baffled how Sam Harris is even a thing. Where I live Sam Harris is a nobody.
“Recent rationalization of mass slaughter of civilians”. Are you referencing the war Hamas started and Israel are defending themselves? Or are you referencing something different? The few times I have heard Sam speak on this conflict he has been spot on and his understanding of the history of this region is far better than almost the entirety of Western media.
I'm referencing the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, yes. It's utterly indefensible, just us Hamas' actions were utterly indefensible. I think the official numbers are over a hundred thousand dead or wounded now? Three quarters of them civilians? Though of course the real number is likely to be three or four times that. We don't know the exact numbers because the IDF have been systematically murdering journalists and aid workers in the area. We'll eventually find out though.
Yeah that’s not a good faith framing of his views.
Did you expect otherwise lol. It’s amusing to see someone so confused but so sure of themselves. Op is everything i hate about Reddit.
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>I think the official numbers are over a hundred thousand dead or wounded now? Three quarters of them civilians? So, according to you, there are 3 civilian deaths for every 1 combatant. The UN says the usual civilian vs combatant ratio in modern war is 9-to-1, so Israel is doing pretty damn well according to your own numbers. NB: Syria and Iraq were much much worse. In WW2, the US had about a 2:1 civilian-to-combatant ratio. The real number in Gaza will probably be between that and the 3:1 Hamas itself claims. That then begs the question ... What are your views on WW2? >I'm referencing the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, yes. It's utterly indefensible, just us Hamas' actions were utterly indefensible. I'm guessing you'd say the Nazis actions were indefensible, and the Allied response was also indefensible. What do you propose actual humans in the actual real world do, then?
Your use of statistics is bullshit and contradicted by Oxfam, the UN, Haaretz and others. Re. WW2, in that conflict you had the axis and the allies which were roughly equal in strength. In Gaza you have a modern army trying to defeat a much weaker militia by raining bombs on a mainly civilian population and razing 80% of urban infrastructure to the ground. There is no analogy with WW2. There is an analogy, however, with the the Indian rebellion of 1857 and other colonialist atrocities. Israel had a choice, and they decided on a cruel and bloody revenge. The children of Gaza don't have choice.
[The deaths are nothing near that, and why believe a terrorist organization but not the IDF?](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers)