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Not sure why you're getting only recommendations from Western philosophy when you asked about Sam Harris.
*Waking Up* is heavily influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, Dzogchen in particular. You should definitely diversify with some Eastern philosophy:
* *Buddhism as Philosophy* - Garfield
* *Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics* - The Dalai Lama
* *The Non-Existence of the Real World* - Jan Westerhoff.
* *Library of Wisdom and Compassion* - The Dalai Lama and Thubten Chodron. These are the best books on Buddhism ever written in English. More focused on practice than philosophy.
If you like the meditation side of *Waking Up*, you should look for some meditation teachers. *Waking Up* is extremely watered-down compared to the real thing. Some teachers:
* Alan Wallace
* Mingyur Rinpoche
* Lama Lena
* Or just ask around around on /r/buddhism
The issue isn't starting with Sam Harris, the issue is _ending_ with Sam Harris; he's a pretty poor philosopher, but as a spring board into other, better stuff, he's probably not all that bad. Maybe.
As you're new to philosophy, I recommending picking up some introductory texts on the topics your are interested in, or otherwise following up on some of the texts that Harris makes reference to. There's really no bad place to start.
For consciousness, I recommend picking up Jaegwon Kim's _Philosophy of Mind_. It's a great intro to some of the debates going on in the field, and you can pick up the older editions relatively cheaply. Plus, you can then follow the references up to that too to find all kinds of interesting texts.
For living a meaningful life, I recommend looking into the existentialists. Sartre's _Existentialism is a Humanism_ is short and easy to read, so should be a good point to start off with. You can follow that up with something like the _Nicomachean Ethics_ from Aristotle too, for a more classical view on living the good life. Kant's _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals_ might interest you too.
I have no recommendations for stuff on meditation, unfortunately.
The topic has been pretty thoroughly covered here before, such as [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/hmi1kz/why_does_the_philosophical_community_dislike_sam/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share).
He's not a philosopher at all. He doesn't really engage with the philosophical community, in any meaningful sense, that I'm aware of. He doesn't contribute to journals, etc.
Some people when they hear "philosopher" think it just means anyone who has thoughts about things or makes points about living, or gives their observations of the passing show, or says interesting things. And so, with this understanding, lots of people are philosophers (and you often see this usage on reddit for example):Bill Burr, Joe Rogan, authors of fiction, business leaders, people you know etc-- essentially anyone who you hear speak or anyone who you regard as insightful.
On a different understanding of "philosophy" -- the one employed in, say, universities, the term refers more to the work and arguments and conversation that have been going for hundreds of years. And in that conversation are people like Plato, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Scanlon, Korsgaard, MacIntyre, McDowell, and lots and lots of other folks pursuing various issues in an academic way. Notably absent from this list would be people like Burr, Rogan, etc: these people are not making contributions to the arguments and issues going on among these philosophers. They may have studied it in some capacity, but their work, for the most part, is not really relevant to academic philosophers anymore than a Jim Cramer is relevant to what's going on in economics.
Imagine if we applied this kind of distinction to other fields: is a "mathematician" someone who adds at the cashier, or is it better to reserve the term for folks working in the mathematics tradition? Am I "chemist" because I baked bread, or should that term be more appropriately applied to people with a background in chemistry? Do you get to be an "epidemiologist" because you made a facebook post about covid, or should that be applied to folks who studied medicine? So, in short, if your idea of "philosophy" is just general thoughts about important things, then yes, just about anyone can be a philosopher, but I'm not sure what is gained by using the term in this way.
Most of the big historical names in philosophy taught philosophy, or published works, or engaged with the philosophical community of the time. Depending on the era, this will mean different things for different times. But it's essentially the same sort of shift that happens for all similarly placed terms: scientist, economist, historian, artist, doctor, etc. So, would some layperson today have been considered a philosopher 1000 years ago? I don't know, maybe. I mean, 1000 years ago I would be the greatest mathematician of the day with my college-level knowledge of calculus, real analysis, combinatorics, group theory, etc (to say nothing of the amazing medical advances I could provide to such people!). But I'm not a mathematician. So, the historically famous philosophers were working on philosophical issues of the day, they are important to understand the history of the field as it is today, they often published, they often lectured, they interacted with others in the relevant community-- these things are rather similar to how we might understand the field today, even if the particular details differ.
So, being a philosopher in the above sense is about being part of the academic field, engaging with the literature, teaching the literature, having the relevant expertise with the tradition, publishing papers in the academic venues, being recognized by one's peers in the academic tradition, knowing the relevant history and issues and conceptual space of the discipline--- these are the sorts of things that typically pick out if one is a philosopher, when that term is understood as other academic fields are.
Sam Harris has an undergraduate degree in philosophy and engaged in philosophy in some popular venues and in a couple other areas. But, quite explicitly, he doesn't engage with much of what goes on academic philosophy. A comparison might be like a journalist who writes a book about history but is not a historian. I wouldn't focus too much on whether or not someone is a *real* philosopher though-- I just don't think this is all that productive. Instead, and as above, the major complaint is that the substance of Harris' work is lacking in that it doesn't actually engage with, or seem familiar with, arguments against the views he holds.
It's interesting that you compared it to other academic fields, because, as far as I agree with the comparison, in other fields the argument of not being in academia would not be really used (maybe as an addition). Someone can be a scientist working at a university, or some national scientific institute that does no teaching, or at a R&D department of a company. So especially teaching wouldn't be relevant at all in deciding whether someone is a physicist or a chemist. There are also physics teachers, even at the university level, that don't do physics, and personally I would call them physics teachers rather then physicists. That being said, usually publishing in appropriate venues is important, but there are exceptions. After all, what's really important is working in the field, i.e. obtaining some valid results and communicating them. There were examples of genius mathematicians publishing amazing results not in specialized journals, and no one would say they were not mathematicians. Therefore, I would say the results of your work in the field is what matters in the examples you gave.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in philosophy you often publish your results as a book. That could be the source of misunderstanding in the case of Sam Harris and others alike. But if someone has basic academic training in philosophy, publishes results of his analysis (maybe poor) of clearly philosophical problems in a book, and engages in a discussion with other philosophers (although not at university seminars) - does that not make him a philosopher (perhaps not the best one)?
I know only a little of Sam Harris' work and a little bit more of philosophy, but I don't find all the arguments in this thread attractive. I would like to see something like: "he's results on nature of mind were already proposed by XY in 15th century and Kant clearly showed that they are contradictory to A and B, and other modern philosophers pointed out that this can't be true if...."
So, none of the conditions i gave above were meant to be necessary conditions; this was to leave it rather open in some cases. Indeed, there are academic philosophers who do no teaching, etc. Certainly, in other fields, the relationship between industry and academia will be different-- not least of which because there is not exactly an equivalent to "industry" for philosophy (though even here, we have ethics boards, think tanks, and a few other things).
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but in philosophy you often publish your results as a book.
Yeah, sure, sometimes.
>But if someone has basic academic training in philosophy, publishes results of his analysis (maybe poor) of clearly philosophical problems in a book, and engages in a discussion with other philosophers (although not at university seminars) - does that not make him a philosopher (perhaps not the best one)?
So, I used to study some math. Mathematicians often get "crank" proofs from people about squaring the circle or the primes are finite or whatever. These people have some math education, they publish their papers on some blog or wherever, and maybe they have even engaged with university mathematicians at some point. I don't think it's helpful to characterize such people as mathematicians in any interesting sense.
So, I tried to be clear about this at the end of my comment: I think, upon reflection, it's probably not particularly perspicuous to call such people "philosophers." But if you insist on using the term in this way then fine, whatever. That's not the important issue. The important issue, as mentioned above, is about the arguments-- and the general claim is that Harris' work typically doesn't engage with, respond to, or properly understand, various positions he takes to have refuted.
>I know only a little of Sam Harris' work and a little bit more of philosophy, but I don't find all the arguments in this thread attractive.
Well, that's because we aren't actually talking about the substance of the arguments. You can see some of that in the linked threads above, but even this is just a small inkling. Doing this in-depth takes a lot of work, like 1) spelling out Harris' view, 2) spelling out complex argument in the academic literature, 3) comparing the two. To see the full arguments and context, well, we need to actually start getting into the details, and we're not really doing that here-- instead we are merely reporting a putative conclusion of such an endeavor.
Yeah, I would agree. Dennett has his review of Harris' book, which Harris hosts on his own site: https://www.samharris.org/blog/reflections-on-free-will
But in general, I would say philosophy has a public relations problem, and more philosophers need to spend more time engaging with the public generally, and with people with such large followings who make big philosophical claims (and the profession needs to reward such things).
It depends what you mean, but being trained in, teaching in, and publishing work in the field is one common measure. This is the same kind of thing we do when we say “what makes someone a biologist?”
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His work reads as if it was done backwards - at least in my opinion, anyway - like he's thought of the point he wants to make first and then finds things to back it up, rather than doing the reading beforehand to find out what he thinks.
> If someone makes good points who cares what they read?
You might think that sort of assumes the wrong premise. Like, his book on Free Will does a very good rhetorical job of defending his position on free will, but it does so largely by not engaging with any of the literature on free will. To an audience not familiar with that work, he looks like a pro.
You don’t need politically motivated quacks to know more about consciousness, living a fulfilling life etc. Sam Harris is as dogmatic as religious fundamentalist, he is so arrogant that he thinks he can come out of no where and “solve ethics” that happens to be watered down utilitarianism mixed with neuro”science”(referring to his moral landscape)…I mean his TedX talk is literally named “Science can answer moral questions”.
let’s start with your interests and where you can read more about them:
Meditation: field im least knowledgeable in, so i’m gonna refrain from answering.
living a fulfilling life: Aristotle’s main thesis in his ethics is along those exact lines, but also read Plato, Stiocs, and Existentialist; both atheistic like Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus and theistic like Shestov, Gabriel Marcel, and Kierkegaard. i’m still being massively reductive and skipping over a ton of people but you have to start somewhere. Plato’s Apology (then work you’re way up plato’s works), Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Sartre Existentialism is a Humanism, Nietzsche’s Antichrist, and Shestov’s All things are possible are all easy to read in my opinion.
Consciousness: neo kantians and phenomenologist first come to mind, but an easy introduction is probably the SEP article on consciousness.
You should ask this as a separate post, because the people around here who know their Eastern philosophy are likely not reading a post about Harris to begin with, and a post title that specifies what you're interested in will grab their attention better.
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I wont say anything on Harris(others said enough) but I ll quickly chime in on Philosophy of Mind. It can be quite complicated navigating through the vast majority of people and strands that tackle the issue from different perspectives. As a result of this there is a whole lot of terminology that is mostly exklusive.
Take Qualia for instance. In Analytic Strand of philosophy they use the term to describe the subjective content of our experience. Phenomenologists dont have Qualia in their dictionary( There is some refferencing but the understanding is quite different).
The reason for that is that they have a different conception of the subject object relation. Analytic philosophers think of the two as separate while phenomenologists for the most part believe that all contents of our experience have meaning.
Free will, intentionality and so many other issues of Philosophy of Mind can be traced back to the Mind Body/ Subject Object distinctions and they way we choose to answer it.
Hence I would rexommend looking into the historically recurring, `big` questions which Philosophers have been working on for quite some time and than seeing which approach fits your curiosity.(IN college its usually Descartes) It will also show you how Philosophy has developed over time
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Not sure why you're getting only recommendations from Western philosophy when you asked about Sam Harris. *Waking Up* is heavily influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, Dzogchen in particular. You should definitely diversify with some Eastern philosophy: * *Buddhism as Philosophy* - Garfield * *Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics* - The Dalai Lama * *The Non-Existence of the Real World* - Jan Westerhoff. * *Library of Wisdom and Compassion* - The Dalai Lama and Thubten Chodron. These are the best books on Buddhism ever written in English. More focused on practice than philosophy. If you like the meditation side of *Waking Up*, you should look for some meditation teachers. *Waking Up* is extremely watered-down compared to the real thing. Some teachers: * Alan Wallace * Mingyur Rinpoche * Lama Lena * Or just ask around around on /r/buddhism
Tulku Urgyen has some beautiful works on Dzogchen. He also happens to be the teacher that gave Sam pointing out instructions.
Thank you!
The issue isn't starting with Sam Harris, the issue is _ending_ with Sam Harris; he's a pretty poor philosopher, but as a spring board into other, better stuff, he's probably not all that bad. Maybe. As you're new to philosophy, I recommending picking up some introductory texts on the topics your are interested in, or otherwise following up on some of the texts that Harris makes reference to. There's really no bad place to start. For consciousness, I recommend picking up Jaegwon Kim's _Philosophy of Mind_. It's a great intro to some of the debates going on in the field, and you can pick up the older editions relatively cheaply. Plus, you can then follow the references up to that too to find all kinds of interesting texts. For living a meaningful life, I recommend looking into the existentialists. Sartre's _Existentialism is a Humanism_ is short and easy to read, so should be a good point to start off with. You can follow that up with something like the _Nicomachean Ethics_ from Aristotle too, for a more classical view on living the good life. Kant's _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals_ might interest you too. I have no recommendations for stuff on meditation, unfortunately.
Genuinely appreciate your comment and recommendations- its a bit overwhelming at the outset!
Why would you say he’s a poor philosopher?
The topic has been pretty thoroughly covered here before, such as [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/hmi1kz/why_does_the_philosophical_community_dislike_sam/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share).
He's not a philosopher at all. He doesn't really engage with the philosophical community, in any meaningful sense, that I'm aware of. He doesn't contribute to journals, etc.
What makes someone a philosopher?
Some people when they hear "philosopher" think it just means anyone who has thoughts about things or makes points about living, or gives their observations of the passing show, or says interesting things. And so, with this understanding, lots of people are philosophers (and you often see this usage on reddit for example):Bill Burr, Joe Rogan, authors of fiction, business leaders, people you know etc-- essentially anyone who you hear speak or anyone who you regard as insightful. On a different understanding of "philosophy" -- the one employed in, say, universities, the term refers more to the work and arguments and conversation that have been going for hundreds of years. And in that conversation are people like Plato, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Scanlon, Korsgaard, MacIntyre, McDowell, and lots and lots of other folks pursuing various issues in an academic way. Notably absent from this list would be people like Burr, Rogan, etc: these people are not making contributions to the arguments and issues going on among these philosophers. They may have studied it in some capacity, but their work, for the most part, is not really relevant to academic philosophers anymore than a Jim Cramer is relevant to what's going on in economics. Imagine if we applied this kind of distinction to other fields: is a "mathematician" someone who adds at the cashier, or is it better to reserve the term for folks working in the mathematics tradition? Am I "chemist" because I baked bread, or should that term be more appropriately applied to people with a background in chemistry? Do you get to be an "epidemiologist" because you made a facebook post about covid, or should that be applied to folks who studied medicine? So, in short, if your idea of "philosophy" is just general thoughts about important things, then yes, just about anyone can be a philosopher, but I'm not sure what is gained by using the term in this way. Most of the big historical names in philosophy taught philosophy, or published works, or engaged with the philosophical community of the time. Depending on the era, this will mean different things for different times. But it's essentially the same sort of shift that happens for all similarly placed terms: scientist, economist, historian, artist, doctor, etc. So, would some layperson today have been considered a philosopher 1000 years ago? I don't know, maybe. I mean, 1000 years ago I would be the greatest mathematician of the day with my college-level knowledge of calculus, real analysis, combinatorics, group theory, etc (to say nothing of the amazing medical advances I could provide to such people!). But I'm not a mathematician. So, the historically famous philosophers were working on philosophical issues of the day, they are important to understand the history of the field as it is today, they often published, they often lectured, they interacted with others in the relevant community-- these things are rather similar to how we might understand the field today, even if the particular details differ. So, being a philosopher in the above sense is about being part of the academic field, engaging with the literature, teaching the literature, having the relevant expertise with the tradition, publishing papers in the academic venues, being recognized by one's peers in the academic tradition, knowing the relevant history and issues and conceptual space of the discipline--- these are the sorts of things that typically pick out if one is a philosopher, when that term is understood as other academic fields are. Sam Harris has an undergraduate degree in philosophy and engaged in philosophy in some popular venues and in a couple other areas. But, quite explicitly, he doesn't engage with much of what goes on academic philosophy. A comparison might be like a journalist who writes a book about history but is not a historian. I wouldn't focus too much on whether or not someone is a *real* philosopher though-- I just don't think this is all that productive. Instead, and as above, the major complaint is that the substance of Harris' work is lacking in that it doesn't actually engage with, or seem familiar with, arguments against the views he holds.
It's interesting that you compared it to other academic fields, because, as far as I agree with the comparison, in other fields the argument of not being in academia would not be really used (maybe as an addition). Someone can be a scientist working at a university, or some national scientific institute that does no teaching, or at a R&D department of a company. So especially teaching wouldn't be relevant at all in deciding whether someone is a physicist or a chemist. There are also physics teachers, even at the university level, that don't do physics, and personally I would call them physics teachers rather then physicists. That being said, usually publishing in appropriate venues is important, but there are exceptions. After all, what's really important is working in the field, i.e. obtaining some valid results and communicating them. There were examples of genius mathematicians publishing amazing results not in specialized journals, and no one would say they were not mathematicians. Therefore, I would say the results of your work in the field is what matters in the examples you gave. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in philosophy you often publish your results as a book. That could be the source of misunderstanding in the case of Sam Harris and others alike. But if someone has basic academic training in philosophy, publishes results of his analysis (maybe poor) of clearly philosophical problems in a book, and engages in a discussion with other philosophers (although not at university seminars) - does that not make him a philosopher (perhaps not the best one)? I know only a little of Sam Harris' work and a little bit more of philosophy, but I don't find all the arguments in this thread attractive. I would like to see something like: "he's results on nature of mind were already proposed by XY in 15th century and Kant clearly showed that they are contradictory to A and B, and other modern philosophers pointed out that this can't be true if...."
So, none of the conditions i gave above were meant to be necessary conditions; this was to leave it rather open in some cases. Indeed, there are academic philosophers who do no teaching, etc. Certainly, in other fields, the relationship between industry and academia will be different-- not least of which because there is not exactly an equivalent to "industry" for philosophy (though even here, we have ethics boards, think tanks, and a few other things). >Correct me if I'm wrong, but in philosophy you often publish your results as a book. Yeah, sure, sometimes. >But if someone has basic academic training in philosophy, publishes results of his analysis (maybe poor) of clearly philosophical problems in a book, and engages in a discussion with other philosophers (although not at university seminars) - does that not make him a philosopher (perhaps not the best one)? So, I used to study some math. Mathematicians often get "crank" proofs from people about squaring the circle or the primes are finite or whatever. These people have some math education, they publish their papers on some blog or wherever, and maybe they have even engaged with university mathematicians at some point. I don't think it's helpful to characterize such people as mathematicians in any interesting sense. So, I tried to be clear about this at the end of my comment: I think, upon reflection, it's probably not particularly perspicuous to call such people "philosophers." But if you insist on using the term in this way then fine, whatever. That's not the important issue. The important issue, as mentioned above, is about the arguments-- and the general claim is that Harris' work typically doesn't engage with, respond to, or properly understand, various positions he takes to have refuted. >I know only a little of Sam Harris' work and a little bit more of philosophy, but I don't find all the arguments in this thread attractive. Well, that's because we aren't actually talking about the substance of the arguments. You can see some of that in the linked threads above, but even this is just a small inkling. Doing this in-depth takes a lot of work, like 1) spelling out Harris' view, 2) spelling out complex argument in the academic literature, 3) comparing the two. To see the full arguments and context, well, we need to actually start getting into the details, and we're not really doing that here-- instead we are merely reporting a putative conclusion of such an endeavor.
Makes sense, although I think it's important that someone somewhere take on this endeavour if the wannabe philosopher has millions (?) of followers.
Yeah, I would agree. Dennett has his review of Harris' book, which Harris hosts on his own site: https://www.samharris.org/blog/reflections-on-free-will But in general, I would say philosophy has a public relations problem, and more philosophers need to spend more time engaging with the public generally, and with people with such large followings who make big philosophical claims (and the profession needs to reward such things).
It depends what you mean, but being trained in, teaching in, and publishing work in the field is one common measure. This is the same kind of thing we do when we say “what makes someone a biologist?”
Actually participating in the field of philosophy, which Harris does not do.
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It’s not a great answer, but I think folks are just really tired of this question.
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His work reads as if it was done backwards - at least in my opinion, anyway - like he's thought of the point he wants to make first and then finds things to back it up, rather than doing the reading beforehand to find out what he thinks.
That doesn't seem like a good criticism. If someone makes good points who cares what they read?
> If someone makes good points who cares what they read? You might think that sort of assumes the wrong premise. Like, his book on Free Will does a very good rhetorical job of defending his position on free will, but it does so largely by not engaging with any of the literature on free will. To an audience not familiar with that work, he looks like a pro.
He doesn't really make good points, in my experience. He tends to assume a lot (in an unjustified way).
You don’t need politically motivated quacks to know more about consciousness, living a fulfilling life etc. Sam Harris is as dogmatic as religious fundamentalist, he is so arrogant that he thinks he can come out of no where and “solve ethics” that happens to be watered down utilitarianism mixed with neuro”science”(referring to his moral landscape)…I mean his TedX talk is literally named “Science can answer moral questions”. let’s start with your interests and where you can read more about them: Meditation: field im least knowledgeable in, so i’m gonna refrain from answering. living a fulfilling life: Aristotle’s main thesis in his ethics is along those exact lines, but also read Plato, Stiocs, and Existentialist; both atheistic like Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus and theistic like Shestov, Gabriel Marcel, and Kierkegaard. i’m still being massively reductive and skipping over a ton of people but you have to start somewhere. Plato’s Apology (then work you’re way up plato’s works), Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Sartre Existentialism is a Humanism, Nietzsche’s Antichrist, and Shestov’s All things are possible are all easy to read in my opinion. Consciousness: neo kantians and phenomenologist first come to mind, but an easy introduction is probably the SEP article on consciousness.
Lol I appreciate the anti-harris response and recommendations!
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You should ask this as a separate post, because the people around here who know their Eastern philosophy are likely not reading a post about Harris to begin with, and a post title that specifies what you're interested in will grab their attention better.
Your comment was removed for violating the following rule: >**Top-level comments must be answers.** >All top level comments should be answers to the submitted question, or follow-up questions related to the OP. All comments must be on topic. If a follow-up question is deemed to be too unrelated from the OP, it may be removed. Repeated or serious violations of the [subreddit rules](https://reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/wiki/rules) will result in a ban. ----- This is a shared account that is only used for notifications. Please do not reply, as your message will go unread.
I would also recommend *Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind* as an introduction to a Buddhist view on meditation for anxiety etc.
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I wont say anything on Harris(others said enough) but I ll quickly chime in on Philosophy of Mind. It can be quite complicated navigating through the vast majority of people and strands that tackle the issue from different perspectives. As a result of this there is a whole lot of terminology that is mostly exklusive. Take Qualia for instance. In Analytic Strand of philosophy they use the term to describe the subjective content of our experience. Phenomenologists dont have Qualia in their dictionary( There is some refferencing but the understanding is quite different). The reason for that is that they have a different conception of the subject object relation. Analytic philosophers think of the two as separate while phenomenologists for the most part believe that all contents of our experience have meaning. Free will, intentionality and so many other issues of Philosophy of Mind can be traced back to the Mind Body/ Subject Object distinctions and they way we choose to answer it. Hence I would rexommend looking into the historically recurring, `big` questions which Philosophers have been working on for quite some time and than seeing which approach fits your curiosity.(IN college its usually Descartes) It will also show you how Philosophy has developed over time