Sam Harris vs. Noam Chomsky

[angrysoba]

Sam Harris has now posted an email exchange between himself and Noam Chomsky. It's quite amusing in a way. Harris seems to have been emboldened to email Chomsky following Krauss's discussion with Chomsky earlier this year and to say that he would like a public discussion of their differences.

Chomsky says the idea of publishing their exchange is "pretty weird, a strange form of exhibitionism", but spends much of the exchange berating Harris for misrepresenting him in his book, End of Faith.

Whether you like Chomsky or not, you have to admire his ability to pummel his opponent even as Harris is asking for a more "collegial" tone.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse

 

[DreadNiK]

I got sick of Chomsky's whining about half way down, after he completely ignores Harris' hypothetical that demonstrates intention is important in how you view the actions of a moral agency, and asks if Chomsky agrees that this is so, and Chomsky responds by saying 'your hypothetical has nothing to do with what we are discussing'...he's either an idiot or deliberately obstructing the discussion...

ETA: skimmed the rest and Harris pretty much responds with what I think as I read Chomsky's responses (even to the point where Chomsky raises some actually interesting points on moral justifications of some historical atrocities and Harris says he sincerely wants to discuss those points further) and then gives up...

 

[Childlike Empress]

Yeah, mildly amusing. I stopped skimming it here:

[...] Your own moral stance is revealed even further by your complete lack of concern about the apparently huge casualties and the refusal even to investigate them.

As for Clinton and associates being “genuine humanitarians,” perhaps that explains why they were imposing sanctions on Iraq so murderous that both of the highly respected international diplomats who administered the “Oil for food” program resigned in protest because they regarded them as “genocidal,” condemning Clinton for blocking testimony at the UN Security Council. Or why he poured arms into Turkey as it was carrying out a horrendous attack on its Kurdish population, one of the worst crimes of the ‘90s. Or why he shifted Turkey from leading recipient of arms worldwide (Israel-Egypt excepted) to Colombia, as soon as the Turkish atrocities achieved their goal and while Colombia was leading the hemisphere by far in atrocious human rights violations. Or why he authorized the Texaco Oil Company to provide oil to the murderous Haitian junta in violation of sanctions. And on, and on, as you could learn if you bothered to read before launching accusations and professing to talk about “ethics” and “morality.” [...]

*ouch*

He knew of course from the outset that he was dealing with a mental midget, and one from the reprehensible school of his "critics" which at least subconsciously accuses Chomsky of the big crime of ascribing the same value to each human life.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Harris has a tenuous grasp of the obvious.

 

[Megalodon]

Thanks for the link, quite an interesting read

Harris managed to worsen my opinion of his intellectual abilities, and that is impressive.

Chomsky had very little to do. Defending that intentions can lessen the moral burden of mass murder is asinine. There are no comic book villains out there. Every single mass murderer believed himself to be the hero of his story. Moreover, the one thing that god-botherers tend to have, specially when they're doing their worse deeds, is good intentions.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Thanks for the link, quite an interesting read

Harris managed to worsen my opinion of his intellectual abilities, and that is impressive.

Yes, unfortunately, I have to agree. Chomsky has views of reality that I might at best term "interesting" and "unsual", but he is clearly a very intelligent man who knows precisely what he is arguing, on what basis, and with what implications.

As for Harris, whilst I never agreed with him to begin with, it is very difficult for me to read him and not come away with the impression that he simply lacks the ability to truly comprehend points of view, or lines of argument that diverge from his own rather simplistic notions of morality. He seems completely confined to very basic ethics textbook thought experiments with intuitively "obvious" conclusions, and simply not able to argue in more general terms, with more nuance, or to consider counterintuitive conclusions.

The difference in mental ability between him and someone like Chomsky is, especially in this context, painfully obvious.

 

[crestfallensidekick]

I think that they're both wrong about the al Shifa missile strike. I always figured that it was intended as a distraction from the Lewinsky scandal.

 

[Craig4]

Who would win if we locked, Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris in a fight to the death cage match? We all would.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Who would win if we locked, Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris in a fight to the death cage match? We all would.

Chomsky would survive for no other reason than to insist that people misquoted him trash-talking Harris before the start of the match.

 

[d4m10n]

I think that they're both wrong about the al Shifa missile strike. I always figured that it was intended as a distraction from the Lewinsky scandal.

You and Hitch both. http://www.salon.com/1998/09/23/news_114

 

[Cain]

You and Hitch both. http://www.salon.com/1998/09/23/news_114

And Clinton-hating Republicans.

 

[d4m10n]

Looking back at the exchange between Chomsky and Harris, much of it centered on the comparison of the attack on the Twin Towers to the bombing of the al-Shifa plant. We know how many people died in those attacks (very nearly 3,000 in the towers, one person in the plant) but there is somewhat less certainty about how many died from the after-effects.

Even though Chomsky's case relies heavily on the assumption that destroying the pharmaceutical plant would have foreseeably and significantly increased the mortality rate throughout Sudan, he doesn't seem to make any effort to show where his numbers actually came from. (So far as I can tell, they came from an editorial by Jonathan Belke.)

Harris, for his part, doesn't seem terribly interested in figuring out the correct answer either.

 

[Praktik]

Thanks for the link, quite an interesting read

Harris managed to worsen my opinion of his intellectual abilities, and that is impressive.

Chomsky had very little to do. Defending that intentions can lessen the moral burden of mass murder is asinine. There are no comic book villains out there. Every single mass murderer believed himself to be the hero of his story. Moreover, the one thing that god-botherers tend to have, specially when they're doing their worse deeds, is good intentions.

Felt kinship with this sentiment, as if you found a better way to say how I feel about evil in the world.

Nice post

 

[Darth Rotor]

Looking back at the exchange between Chomsky and Harris, much of it centered on the comparison of the attack on the Twin Towers to the bombing of the al-Shifa plant. We know how many people died in those attacks (very nearly 3,000 in the towers, one person in the plant) but there is somewhat less certainty about how many died from the after-effects.

Even though Chomsky's case relies heavily on the assumption that destroying the pharmaceutical plant would have foreseeably and significantly increased the mortality rate throughout Sudan, he doesn't seem to make any effort to show where his numbers actually came from. (So far as I can tell, they came from an editorial by Jonathan Belke.)

Harris, for his part, doesn't seem terribly interested in figuring out the correct answer either.

Harris has never been too big on that, what he's big on is his point of view.

 

[ThunderChunky]

Chomsky came off like an ass, but if you can look past it he does have a point. He a actually did consider the implications of intent. It would have been nice if they actually could have a real debate but Chomsky didn't want that and made it impossible to happen. I think Harris' points about collateral damage and intent make perfect sense though. Accidentally killing people or killing them because they were in proximity to someone trying to kill you when you are killing them in self defense are quite different than intentionally killing someone that means you no harm.

 

[bit_pattern]

I had to Google Sam Harris to find out who he is - conveniently, this was the first hit I got. It makes it pretty clear both why Chomsky was a bit cranky, having to explain things that he have covered in minute detail across his vast corpus of work to someone who has only ever read a short pamphlet of essays that he has written. Probably goes a long way to explaining why he wouldn't bother debating the clown too...

https://newmatilda.com/2015/05/16/n...ris-revealing-lesson-religious-fundamentalism

In the email exchange, Harris reprinted his comments on Chomsky and 9/11 in Harris’ book, The End of Faith. During the email exchange, Harris seems to admit that 9/11 is the only book he has read by Chomsky: he admitted to not reading Radical Priorities, explaining that, “I treated your short book, 9/11, as a self-contained statement on the topic”.

Which is a rather striking admission: he claimed to want to conduct a debate with Chomsky because of his (Chomsky’s) prominence and influence, criticised Chomsky’s political position in print…. But knows next to nothing about Chomsky’s political views, because he has only read a short pamphlet of interviews by Chomsky, which ends with a list of recommended reading, including several of his own.

Chomsky has produced a vast corpus of political books, with probably tens of thousands of footnotes dealing with the questions in issue: if Harris were genuinely interested in learning about Chomsky’s views, why not try reading them seriously?

 

[Dani]

Interesting. I'll try to read the discussion between Chomsky and that idiot without bias.