The Problem With Sam Harris, pt. 1

Ok, as many of you who frequent this site know, I like to quote Sam Harris; what attracts me about him is his basic premise that religious beliefs should be held up to the same scrutiny as any other human phenomenon. If you think about it for a minute, it's not really that radical of a concept. But, as his message and bestselling book, "The End of Faith" (TEoF), have made their rounds and spread his message, there is much to criticize in some of what Harris has said in his book. The two criticisms I'm hoping to address (in two parts, as to not overwhelm and to make sure I do my homework) are Harris' apparent embrace of Eastern mysticism and psychic abilities, and Harris' Islamophobia, intolerance and support of torture. For a few articles to give you some background on the criticism, go here, and here.

Chapter 7 of TEoF is called 'Experiments in Consciousness', and is arguably the most open-minded section of the book. Harris basically asserts that there is still much to be learned in defining what we know as 'consciousness', and that in some ways, spirituality is a way of investigating the nature of consciousness:

"The history of human spirituality is the history to explore and modify the deliverances of consciousness through methods like fasting , chanting, sensory deprivation, prayer, meditation, and the use of psychotropic plants. There is no question that experiments of this sort can be conducted in a rational manner. Indeed, they are some of our only means of determining to what extent the human condition can be deliberately transformed. Such an enterprise becomes irrational only when people begin making claims about the world that cannot be supported by empirical evidence." (p 210, TEoF)

Now, in some of the criticism one can find about Harris', a recurring theme is that somehow he is being inconsistent by being open to the possibilities of psychic phenomena such as ESP, and that he believes that the construction of the 'self' is quite possibly an illusion (which is consistent with many Eastern mystic belief systems). Meera Nanda over at the New Humanist:

"Harris describes the mystical experience as tuning, or focusing, the mind through meditation, fasting, chanting, sensory deprivation or psychotropic drugs, that enables it to overcome, or dissolve, the sense of the self that stands separate from the objects of its consciousness. The goal is to “experience the world perfectly shorn of self… to lose the subject/object perception… to continue to experience the world, but without the feeling that there is a knower standing apart form the known. Thoughts may arise, but the feeling that one is a thinker of these thoughts vanishes. Harris is describing the classic all-is-one and one-is-all experience that mystics and spiritualists have reported throughout history."

I take issue with Nanda's problem with the 'loss of self'... it is a very conservative perspective that I feel is deeply rooted in the fear of the loss of individuality. Harris:

"As a mental phenomenon, loss of self is not as rare as our scholarly neglect of it suggests. This experience is characterized by a sudden loss of subject/object perception: the continuum of experience remains, but one no longer feels that there is a knower standing apart from the know. Thoughts may arise, but the feeling that one is the thinker of these thoughts have vanished" (TEoF, p.212)

Last semester, as I did my research for a paper on the use of entheogenic (psychotropic) plants in native cultures, this theme of 'depersonalization' (brought on by the consumption of plants, in that case) was a common theme. Psychologists found the use of psychedelics a huge breakthrough, in part because of the ability to seemingly break down the ego, and it showed promising therapeutic possibilities, which sadly came to an end after the criminalization of them in the mid-60's. So, I don't think that Harris, in embracing this possibility, is going out on a limb here. He is showing an open mind that, unfortunately is lacking in some of his other arguments in the book.

I don't believe that any of the critics that I've read have read Harris' rebuttal to Tom Flynn's criticisms in Free Inquiry magazine last year:

"The hypothesis is this: if I use my attention in the prescribed way, it may have a specific, reproducible effect. Needless to say, what happens (or fails to happen) along any path of “spiritual” practice has to be interpreted in light of some conceptual scheme, and everything must remain open to rational discussion. How this discussion proceeds will ultimately be decided by contemplative scientists. As I said in my book, if we ever develop a mature science of the mind, most of our religious texts will be no more useful to mystics than they now are to astronomers.

What words should we use to acknowledge the fact that the happiest person on this earth at this moment might have spent the last twenty years living alone in a cave? Any experienced meditator knows that this is a serious possibility. (Indeed, I consider it not only possible, but likely.) What can we say about the fact that the conventional sources of human happiness—association with family and friends, positive engagement with society, diverse experiences of physical pleasure, etc.—might be neither necessary nor sufficient to produce happiness in its most profound forms? This is not New Age mumbo jumbo. What secularists like Flynn tend not to realize is that there are genuine, introspective insights that can be terribly difficult to acquire. The lack of general accessibility does not render such insights at all suspect...

I also took considerable heat from Flynn for a few remarks I made about the nature of consciousness. Most atheists appear to be certain that consciousness is entirely dependent upon (and reducible to) the workings of the brain. In the last chapter of the book, I briefly argue that this certainty is unwarranted. I say this as one who is deeply immersed in the neuroscientific and philosophical literature on consciousness: the truth is that scientists still do not know what the relationship between consciousness and matter is. I am not in the least suggesting that we make a religion out of this uncertainty, or do anything else with it. Needless to say, the mysteriousness of consciousness does nothing to make conventional religious notions about God and paradise any more plausible."

I like to think I have a somewhat perceptive bullshit detector. In reading that chapter in question, I didn't take away from it any sense of Harris 'jumping the fence', so to speak. Harris is simply expressing an openness to some of the unanswered questions out there, whether it be ESP (which is something that, although the 'scientific jury' is not solidified, there are many legitimate scientists that believe in its possibilities, just that we haven't enough info yet), or the insights brought on by meditation. Harris isn't attributing these things to supernatural causes by any means. As I see it, he's just open to some ideas to which we don't have answers to yet.

I didn't have much of an issue with Harris on this subject. However, I DO have some serious reservations about Harris and intolerance, and an overestimation of the negative impacts of religion. I'll have that coming up in part 2, later this week.