Critique of Determinism and Sam Harris

 

 

Yep, if humans are robots or brains in a bag—everything we care about from rights and freedom to human dignity to justice and responsibility are absolutely and totally undermined.

Its ironic that the group that claims to stand for “freedom” is so anti-thetical to it in terms of determinism and relativism (and ultimately undermining any possibility of value or meaningful goals).

They write books to brains in a bag or robots. That makes total sense.

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The argument is that if you accept his premise not just things you care about, but everything you care about it undermined. Everything that you could hope to have meaning and purpose is undermined. You don’t have a moral justification for freedom or rights and you don’t have a moral justification for human dignity (or anything you value).

Also, when forced to choose between two things that you’re not sure about—this serves as a pretty good tie breaking argument.

Not to mention putting on display the utter incoherence of the argument itself. If atheism claims to protect freedom and dignity this points out that taking some of its core premises seriously means that it is roasted on its on pitard.

If we are robots, everything about the academy, Maslow’s hierarchy, our legal system, and our ways of treating people collapses.

Any risk that we have freedom or free will or agency or autonomy—means his argument is wrong. He has to win 100% determinism.

Do you think we’re robots? Do you treat yourself as a robot? Which philosophy do you life by?