Harry Bosch
Contributor
Could you please provide a link that supports your position? Thanks in advance!
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Sam Harris picks a fight with Noam Chomsky and gets eviscerated
- Thread starter Warpoet
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Could you please provide a link that supports your position? Thanks in advance!
Reading through the exchange again, yes.
Here's what I think it boils down to: Harris is fixated on the question of intent as proof of the West's moral superiority despite its wrongdoing. Chomsky doesn't think it matters very much, and speaks on the matter in a very long-winded and somewhat circular fashion, never really addressing anything Sam asks about it directly because he views Sam as a nonentity. I let my personal dislike of Harris, and propensity for rudeness of the sort on display here, affect my initial reading. Getting past that, this whole exchange appears to be a misfire.
But let's be frank. Chomsky said from the start that he didn't want to play ball. So what did Sam hope to accomplish here? The whole thing seemed from the start to be engineered as another blog post for samharris.org. Which is fine, but if Sam wanted to have the sort of in-depth, lengthy "debate" he seems to like, with endless exposition, overanalysis and overclarifications, it was pretty clear that Chomsky wasn't his man. He pushed ahead with this anyway, though. Chomsky was definitely a dick, and upon second reading seems overly defensive, takes things too personally and is at times quite unfair. He seems to be talking past Sam the whole time. He does make some really excellent points though, and I don't think he makes any actual claims he can't back up. A lot of what he says challenges the narrative about foreign policy Harris likes to follow, and it's never addressed. Whether Harris' failure to address these points is due to inability or sheer frustration at Chomsky's refusal to cooperate, I'm not sure - probably a mix of both. But I'm left with the question of why he even pursued this "dialogue" in the first place when the outcome was pretty clearly going to be a bad one, let alone post the whole thing publicly.
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Axulus
Veteran Member
Very good points. Chomsky was not expecting this dialogue to be made public and did mention several times he didn't think a rational dialogue on the topic was possible. Sam definitely had an agenda to make this public from the get go as such a discussion/debate with Chomsky would definitely bring attention to Sam. Chomsky's points regarding the Al-Shifa bombing were very interesting and I had hoped that they would've been able to explore that topic further but Chomsky had too much disdain for Sam; there was too much bad blood between them.
untermensche
Contributor
I can understand why you don't want to discuss his embarrassing exchange with Chomsky. You know the topic of this thread.
Harris is a moral midget who can't even seem to find criticism of the most immoral act carried out in this century, the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
Yet he has the balls to think he can teach somebody like Chomsky about morality.
As I have said already, Harris is a complete waste of time. There is nothing to be gained from him.
untermensche
Contributor
I've read it.
The invasion of Iraq was an act of gross immorality. A war crime on the scale of the worst crimes in history. An entire nation destroyed. About a million dead and millions more injured as a result.
Yet all Harris can seem to muster is a comment about it being a distraction from something he liked. The immorality in Afghanistan.
The man is a moral midget who has absolutely nothing of importance to say about current events.
arkirk
Veteran Member
Did you read the link in the OP? That is a good starting point. Harris actually had the gaul to publish it. Harris has always been a supporter of U.S. military intervention in the affairs of backward nations. He was with Hitchens on the invasion of Iraq...nuff said...er Afghanistan...er you name it! Frankly I got my fill of Harris a long time ago and stopped following him. I felt he had nothing but condescending advice and it always was a bit chauvanistic. Just read what he says about the "intentions" of our enemies...you get that in the OP link. He can never imagine anybody changing an opinion and perhaps their intentions because his appear to be unchangable and based on the idea that big brother U.S. always has the right medicine for any wayward or backward country and that medicine seems to always be wearing military fatigues.
J842P
Veteran Member
So I take you can't actually produce anything to back up your claim.
arkirk
Veteran Member
Did you read the OP?
untermensche
Contributor
What are Harris's opinions if not one huge apology for the so-called "war on terror"?
He can't even get himself to condemn unprovoked attacks that result in the destruction of an entire nation, an attack justified only with lies.
What is that besides support for the most heinous acts imaginable?
J842P
Veteran Member
Yes.
No, that's too harsh. He never gives Harris the statement of position on intention he wants, because he makes it very clear that it's irrelevant to the question that was originally asked. He does explicitly make the point that his response on the universality of claims of good intentions was intended as a direct response to the questions Sam was asking.
The problem here is that Harris' usual style breaks down. Harris typically sets out a broad question as a setting, which he feel is too general unanswerable, and then focuses in on a more specific question which is intended to be answerable, and which can used as a proxy for the larger question. This is the same reductionist approach that is occasionally used in some areas of science, where the topic of inquiry isn't directly testable. The advantage is that it allows for a definitive answer, the disadvantage is that it gives the illusion of having considered the broader question, when in fact you have not.
However, Chomsky doesn't let him get away with his usual approach. He doesn't let himself be fooled into only dealing with Harris' chosen proxy measure, intention, because he doesn't agree that it's useful or important. So his reply is to say why it isn't useful or important, and instead he focuses on something that does answer the broader issue - the one that Harris doesn't want to deal with - but the one that he was actually talking about.
And that's where my sympathy for Harris evaporates. Because despite his protestations about what he wants to achieve, he baulks at addressing his own question. He doesn't want to consider anything beyond intention. Chomsky is spot on that Harris has not considered his own questions, and refuses to do so.
Well lets look at the context. Sam Harris has publically attacked Chomsky with claims that, with a minimum of research which Sam Harris admits he never did, turn out to be demonstrably untrue. He has now contacted Chomsky privately, looking for material for publication, on the subject of those claims. What he's trying to achieve seems fairly obvious - Harris isn't nearly as famous as Chomsky, and any kind of interchange between the two on even terms would be a big boost for him. Chomsky, for his part, doesn't talk about Harris, hasn't made claims about him, and has nothing to gain.
And this is not just historical behaviour. During the actual exchange, Harris makes the following claims
1) That Chomsky treated 9/11 and the Sudan bombing as morally equivalent
2) That Chomsky ignores the subject of intentions
These are demonstrated by Chomsky to be false, and Harris doesn't address that, at all. Chomsky brings up the point again, and again, Harris tries to change the subject. Meanwhile, in every post Harris is attempting to provide moral and social advice and instruction to Chomsky. Despite Harris' continuing attempts to cast Chomsky as if he were somehow out of control or unreasonable, It was Harris being a dick, not Chomsky. Can you identify anything Chomsky did or said that was unreasonable? Can you identify any point where Chomsky refused to answer a question? Now do the same for Harris. See the difference?
Well it's easy to tell. If he's never addressed them in any way before or since, it's a pretty good indication that it wasn't just the situation. Can any fans of Harris out there point to somewhere where he addresses these points? Or does he, as Chomsky suggested, avoid considering them?
One of them had been published attacking the other, cited that attack as a topic for discussion, and used offense as an excuse not to answer questions. The other had not, and did not. Whatever feelings they may have had, only one them felt constrained by those feelings from participating in the discussion.
In other words, Harris was in the right. Chomsky spouted BS and a bunch of you on the left fell for it.
untermensche
Contributor
That's about as poor a reading as one could have.
Harris wanted to talk about meaningless "thought experiments" that had no connection to anything.
Chomsky tried to reduce the conversation to something that could make progress.
Harris wanted no part of that and evaded and ran. He looked incredibly foolish doing it.
Here is probably the most salient part of the exchange: It is Chomsky breaking down the issue to as simple as possible.
For this Harris offered absolutely no answer. He didn't even acknowledge it.
Pretty much, but I've seen Loren do a lot worse than that before. Think we all have.
Axulus
Veteran Member
I'm not sure how you got this from reading the exchange. Sam Harris considers intention important, and he was attempting to find out where they agree and disagree on the matter of intention _before_ discussing the various events/topics Sam wanted to discuss. The reason why Sam proposed those outlandish scenarios/thought experiments is to _isolate_ intention as the only relevant factor differing the moral implications of the scenarios so as to get clear/precise answers on Chomsky's view regarding intentions.
Intention is definitely _not_ the only thing Sam considers important. It just seemed that way because it was so exceedingly difficult to get a straight answer from Chomsky, so Sam had to try multiple times to clear up the confusion. How can a conversation proceed productively unless one is confident what _precisely_ the views of the opponent are and what principles the opponent is using to guide those views? I got a general sense of Chomsky's views and principles, but not to the level of specificity required to have an engaging and nuanced conversation.
Axulus
Veteran Member
Right about what? Sam didn't really take a position on anything other than he believed that Clinton thought the Al-Shifa bombing was producing chemical weapons and didn't intend to harm any innocents. Sam did not defend this position because he first wanted to get clarity on the moral importance/relevance of intentions from Chomsky.
Warpoet has realized what really happened, that he was originally blinded by his bias. How about you taking off your blinders also?
Then he shouldn't have made it the last thing he mentioned after a whole slew of inaccurate accusations about Chomsky's views. What Harris said was that he wanted to discuss his extract on Chomsky as a starting point. The article was dismissing Chomsky for various reasons (that turned out to be false) and then going to claim that intentionality was the critical difference. Harris then tried to confine the discussion to intentionality, in effect inviting Chomsky to tacitly agree with the main thrust of the article. Chomsky addressed the points in the order Harris raised them. He covered all the points he made.
And in doing so, was again trying to assume the content of the article as fact, that intentionality was critical. Again, Chomsky gave him an answer, but he had to preface it with a rejection of the assumption Harris was making.
What was unclear? Chomsky's answer was both obvious and offered immediately. Intentionality is claimed by everyone to be good, so it's not a useful measure. Where's the confusion?
Very easily. Most conversation go along those lines. If you're discussing a subject, what you need to know is what argument is being put forward on the subject and what supports that. If, instead, you're trying to ignore the subject and find fault with your interlocutor, then I would agree a precise definition of their opinions is paramount.
I got a good idea of what he was saying on this subject. I'm happy to explain it to you if you're struggling. What you seem to want, however, is a summary of Chomsky the person in a couple of sentences, so you can discuss him as a source of opinions. People aren't that simple.
I know reading is hard sometimes, but you really ought to at least try it. My personal bias made this seem at first like a proper debate where Sam got annihilated; in reality, it's more of Chomsky giving him a lecture rather than having a dialogue.
That said, his factual arguments about Clinton bombing Sudan, and the ethical questions he raises about U.S. foreign policy - which is what you really have a problem with - are all sound.
And this still comes out making Sam look very bad, first and foremost because he should have known better. As Togo notes, he wanted publicity, and to create a sense of parity with Chomsky that does not exist. But what he got was a pretty severe dressing down, one that wasn't really called for but that he should have seen coming from a mile away. And he was clearly unprepared to respond to it.
arkirk
Veteran Member
He didn't need Chomsky for that. There has been so much mind-reading here by those supporting bombing. It is obvious that Clinton ordered the bombing of innocent people that led to the deaths of even more innocent people. That description is really a match with 9-11. So many of us here seem to think that if we make a mistake with our violence, we ought to be forgiven because we had the "best" of intentions. Violence is never an example of our best intentions.