Dennett throws down the gloves and pummels Sam Harris right in the gut

[bennyboy]

Says the history major on his way home from his job pealing and slicing potatoes.

. . . says the guy who can't spell "peeling."

[pocaracas]

Ah... guys... I'm not in the mood to go through those 20 pages... can anyone give me the watered down version?
Traditionally, Harris defends the brain-mind duality, while Bennet goes for the mind as emergent feature of the brain...
What does this new thing bring up?

[houseofcantor]

Okay, well not literally. But a week or so ago Dennett released his first formal response to Sam Harris' hard determinism argued in The Moral Landscape and Free Will, and it's a pretty thorough demolition. Dennett even calls the latter book a "veritable museum of mistakes." It will be interesting to see how Harris responds and he most certainly will. Maybe we'll even get a debate between the two this year. If you are interested in the free will vs. determinism debate and have the patience (it's around 20 pages), Dennett's essay is well worth the read.

http://www.naturalism.org/Dennett_reflec...e_Will.pdf

From Dennett's response it is pretty clear to me that the cosmological brat is an intellectual lightweight outside his own specialty. That he could go off so half cocked on a topic he has given only superficial reflection is a tribute to his narcissism which obviously is second to none. Harris annoys me.

I thought the "cosmological brat" was Krause.

[Mudhammam]

Ah... guys... I'm not in the mood to go through those 20 pages... can anyone give me the watered down version?
Traditionally, Harris defends the brain-mind duality, while Bennet goes for the mind as emergent feature of the brain...
What does this new thing bring up?

Dennett says Harris' mother was a slut and that he should shut up before Dennett gets mad (he actually refers to himself in third person throughout).

[Whateverist]

From Dennett's response it is pretty clear to me that the cosmological brat is an intellectual lightweight outside his own specialty. That he could go off so half cocked on a topic he has given only superficial reflection is a tribute to his narcissism which obviously is second to none. Harris annoys me.

I thought the "cosmological brat" was Krause.

Oops. I did just conflate them didn't I. Thanks for the heads up.

[MindForgedManacle]

I've been annoyed with Harris for awhile now. "The Moral Landscape" has quite a bit of BS in it. Completely fails the fact-value problem, and seems to forget that other types of moral theories aren't consequentialistic, so him trying to reduce them to it is ludicrous.


I find similar problems with his treatment of compatibilism, in that while he seems to grasp some of it, he tries for too big of moves against it with such little, of content, being said. There's a reason compatibilism is the most afhered to position on free-will by philosophers, and it certainly can't be boiled down to simply try to hold on to the idea. Otherwise theism and other sorts of positions would be much more likely to have had more popularity amongst philosophers.

[Sword of Christ]

They both make a veritable museum of mistakes, they deny the very existence of God for a start. hock:

[pocaracas]

They both make a veritable museum of mistakes, they deny the very existence of God for a start. hock:

Why should they start with the existence of any god?

[Sword of Christ]

Why should they start with the existence of any god?

Well you have to start somewhere.

[Chas]

I'm with Min on this, not dissing philosophy, but I prefer to waste my time on concrete shit. Masturbation is more than rubbing a penis or a clitoris.

I think it's important to have a well-articulated philosophical framework by which to interpret the observations I make, or rather, when I "waste my time on concrete shit." Without philosophy, there is no science.

Without science, philosophy is simply rhetoric.

---

From Dennett's response it is pretty clear to me that the cosmological brat is an intellectual lightweight outside his own specialty. That he could go off so half cocked on a topic he has given only superficial reflection is a tribute to his narcissism which obviously is second to none. Harris annoys me.

I thought the "cosmological brat" was Krause.

Nah, it's Krauss.