See this
previous post, and this
one, as background. Here's
one of Harris' written responses to Haidt. A few excerpts with which
I agree follow. The first sounds like the kennlingus notion that
every view has some truth, i.e., is appropriate to its 'level.' He
quotes Haidt:
"Every longstanding ideology and way of life contains some wisdom, some
insights into ways of suppressing selfishness, enhancing cooperation,
and ultimately enhancing human flourishing."
Harris responds:
“Anyone feeling nostalgic for the
'wisdom' of the Aztecs? Rest assured, there’s nothing like the
superstitious murder of innocent men, women, and children to
'suppress selfishness' and convey a shared sense of purpose. Of
course, the Aztecs weren’t the only culture to have discovered
human flourishing' at its most sanguinary and psychotic. […]
Numerous other societies ritually murdered their fellow human beings
because they believed that invisible gods and goddesses, having an
appetite for human flesh, could be so propitiated. Many of their
victims were of the same opinion, in fact, and went willingly to
slaughter, fully convinced that their deaths would transform the
weather, or cure the king of his venereal disease, or in some other
way spare their fellows the wrath of the Unseen.
“What would Haidt have us think about
these venerable traditions of pious ignorance and senseless butchery?
Is there some wisdom in these cults of human sacrifice that we should
now honor? Must we take care not to throw out the baby with the
bathwater? Or might we want to eat that baby instead? Indeed, many of
these societies regularly terminated their rituals of sacred murder
with a cannibal feast. Is my own revulsion at these practices a sign
that I view these distant cultures with the blinkered gaze of a
colonialist? Shall we just reserve judgment until more of the facts
are in? When does scientific detachment become perverse? When might
it be suicidal?”
What Harris seems to miss, repeatedly, almost obtusely, is that religions evolve, as do our ideas of God (see Robert Wright's The Evolution of God), as does human consciousness and understanding. Does he think there were people standing around during those Aztec sacrifices arguing that they are barbarian and cruel, since there is no god to answer said sacrifice? I would guess not - it took another 1,200 years (give or take) for rational mind to reach it's current distribution. As in all things, we see the world not as it is, but as we are.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. He doesn't use the language of developmental psychology or kennilingus but he does support meditative or contemplative states as a better moral base from which to judge flourishing, like his video I posted about an experiment in happiness. He is also critical of the dogmatic religious aspects of Buddhism, while accepting the mystical states induced by meditation. So in that sense he does see something of value today from historical Buddhism and other contemplative traditions but not the religious overlays of that history.
ReplyDeleteSo overall I don't see him as being critical of all aspects of prior historical religions, just the worldviews from those times, as they continue today in spite of the rational Enlightenment. In kennilingus, its a differentiation between basic and transitional structures,* what is included and what is replaced in development. There is an IPS thread on the topic and it still makes for a lot of confusion in developmental circles.
* http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/ladder-climber-view
The following from Harris' response to critics* might be useful:
ReplyDelete"My model of the moral landscape does allow for multiple peaks -- many different modes of flourishing, admitting of irreconcilable goals. [...] Such disagreements do not land us back in moral relativism, however: because there will be right and wrong ways to move toward one peak or the other; there will be many more low spots on the moral landscape than peaks (i.e. truly wrong answers to moral questions); and for all but the loftiest goals and the most disparate forms of conscious experience, moral disagreements will not be between sides of equal merit. Which is to say that for most moral controversies, we need not agree to disagree; rather, we should do our best to determine which side is actually right."
And this excerpt which takes account of some embodied human universals as basis for morality:
"In any case, I suspect that radically disjoint peaks are unlikely to exist for human beings. We are far too similar to one another to be that different. If we each could sample all possible states of human experience, and were endowed with perfect memories so that we could sort our preferences, I think we would converge on similar judgments of what is good, what is better, and what is best. Differences of opinion might still be possible, and would themselves be explicable in terms of differences at the level of our brains."
* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-response-to-critics_b_815742.html