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I have raised concerns about the neutrality (or lack thereof) in the Science and Morality section but the Islam section on here is, quite frankly, borderline libelous. More time seems to be spent articulating criticisms of Harris' views than on describing what he actually thinks. This criticism is particularly problematic and should be removed, especially since this is an article on a living person.
"From him we learn, among other things, that torture is just another form of collateral damage in the "war on terror"—regrettable, maybe, but a necessary price to pay in the crucial effort to save Western civilization from the threat of radical Islam… As in the golden age of positivism, a notion of sovereign science is enlisted in the service of empire. Harris dispenses with the Christian rhetoric of his imperialist predecessors but not with their rationalizations for state-sponsored violence.[41]"
Harris in controversial, so including criticisms is, to a certain degree, understandable, but this is a really misleading and dishonest criticism to include. Rather than articulating Harris' argument about just how unethical collateral damage can be and his argument that, under extreme ticking time bomb scenarios, torturing a wrong doer to stop an imminent threat would be a more ethical alternative than bombing an area with high civiliaan causualties in order to stop an imminent threat. Yet the latter option is sanctioned as justified under international law while the former option is not. Moreover, Harris makes clear he does not think torture should be legal - he merely notes that there are extreme scenarios in which we hsould be more willing to torture than to engage in hostitlities that would result in collateral damage. We get none of this from the article, we only get a short paragraph from a critic.
The article then goes on to merely note that Harris has supported profiling in airports. It then present a barrage of scolding criticism for such a view. We don't hear anywhere in the article that Harris thinks that he should be included in the list of people profiled in airports (namely, males from the ages 20-50). The reader is left with the impression that he advocates that there be some special Muslim security line with extra screening there. His point is that we should be able to priortize our screening given the limited resources we have and not apply the same security standards to 80 year old women as we do to 30 year old men. But we get none of this from the article.
So needless to say I think this article has a lot of issues and the unbalanced weight given to critics needs to be addressed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mylescoen12 (talk • contribs) 00:50, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
This entry is indeed ridiculously biased. One gets the impression, and this is obviously deliberate, that no one has ever had a positive reaction to any of his published work. We are treated to a litany of negative criticisms, and that is about it.74.215.197.161 (talk) 11:12, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
Maybe the solution to the problem is to flesh out more details of Harris' claims, rather than to erase the criticisms. BabyJonas (talk) 21:39, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps we should seek dispute resolution to this? ~ anon
I'm not seeing anything neutral or informative about this entire section. Due to the nature of Sam Harris' books, and the tendency to offend the religious, this entire page has obviously been autopsied by these critics with poor intent. I would venture to say the entire section should be deleted, and locked, especially if this is an ongoing problem. Sentrybowl (talk) 16:55, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
I attempted to add a section to the talk page about a different section in the article but it was filtered for some reason. Hopefully that false positive will be fixed soon. But, in any case, I just wanted to note that this section is quite rightly identified as lending too much credence to crticisms and in fact presents criticisms in a misleading manner (I think the article as a whole shares this problem). Since this is an article page about a living person, I think we should consider deleting these criticisms promptly until we can find a balanced description of his views and crticisms they have faced.
Also, while a bit of an academic judgment call, I think it is hard to deny that Sam Harris has engaged in a meta-ethical debate - I don't know what else you could call the view he articulates in The Moral Landscape other than a meta-ethical position. It may be a wrong one (as I think it is) but it is certainly a metaethical view and it is false to claim he has just ignored the debate about the status of value claims in the world. To quote one footnote from his book " Scientific judgments presuppose 'epistemic values' - coherence, simplicity, beauty, parsimony, etc. Putnam has pointed out, as I do here, that all the arguments against the existence of moral truth could be applied to scientific truth without any change." Again, I disagree, and many other do as well, but this is a respectable metaethical position and including suggestions that it is not even engaged in meta-ethics is difficult to defend. What are people's thoughts on deleting these criticisms or the section entirely until susbstantial improvements are made? Any suggestions on what might be included? Mylescoen12 (talk) 04:05, 4 October 2016 (UTC)mylescoen12
Yeah, this ought to go. It is clearly the result of brigading by both his personal detractors and critics of the positions put forth in the book. It should be amended or removed. In its current state, it gives impression that the professional consensus is entirely negative, which is hardly the case, as can be evinced from a simple Google search.4.14.5.210 (talk) 13:55, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
I'd venture to say that none of the reviewers are notable. Unless an example of a positive opposed narrative was inserted, (which seems hardly placable or necessary) they should be removed altogether and the outline of the section should be re-shaped as a neutral, factual, descriptive paragraph, with excerpts from the author --without outside rebuttal. An Encyclopedia is not the place for a critical debate on an authors work. Sentrybowl (talk) 20:28, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Harris isn't a philosopher so I have no idea why he's listed as one. Apollo The Logician (talk) 14:36, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
One does: Stephen Bullivant's Oxford Handbook of Atheism calls him a philosopher, I think. Frankly I don't think that inclusion is decisive, however. There are undercutting worries: Maybe Bullivant made a mistake, or overlooked that tiny fact. Maybe Bullivant just wanted to be charitable to Harris' self-description. But to me, there's just too important an overriding principle here: An undergraduate degree in philosophy doesn't make one a philosopher. BabyJonas (talk) 22:03, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
Reading this article, I was struck by the number of cited critics of Harris' positions whose notability was not obvious. The reference to Ali Sina in the Islam subsection is one (I would say, poorly phrased) example, and the reference to Margaret Wertheim would seem to be another. The Wertheim reference, in particular, seems to give more attention to Wertheim's opinions than Harris's (her comments also don't seem to be relevant to the subsection in which they appear). Unless anyone objects, I intend to delete these passages. Elsewhere, the discussion of Harris's views on morality seems grossly unbalanced, failing to give any impression of Harris's argument, while expounding his critics' opinions at length. --IxK85 (talk) 14:00, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
I see that there have been a few edits to remove references to Project Reason from the Sam Harris article.
The Project Reason page indicates that the website has been taken down (indeed, it seems to still exist but offers no content) and there are some forum buckets on samharris.org that appear to have been brought over from the Project Reason website, starting sometime around January 2016 (a year ago as I write this).
Searching around, I have found no reliable sources discussing the shutdown of Project Reason, but there are a couple of blog posts (Is project reason gone, Is project reason quietly shutting down) at Shadow to Light that discuss it.
Under the circumstances, I can see changing the wording in the page to place Project Reason in the past tense, but I'm not sure removing it altogether is the right thing to do. FreeKnowledgeCreator, what's your view on the right way to proceed? —jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 10:07, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
(Moved here from a user's Talk page. -X)
Hi, you reverted my category edits to Sam Harris and Bill Maher (I changed Category:Critics of religions to Category:Critics of Islam and Category:Critics of Christianity) to broaden the categories -- but Category:Critics of religions is a parent category of both these categories, so I felt these were more appropriate categories to use. --Jatkins (talk - contribs) 19:38, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
It seems to me that Harris is expressing his personal ideological preferences re metaphysical issues while wearing the mantle of "neuroscientist", in order to lend an aura of authority and expertise to his personal guesses about questions that are not answerable by scientific methods, and which lie outside of the domain of scientific investigation. I don't see evidence that he has done ground-breaking work in neuroscience, e.g. not a Nobel Prize winner, and so his day job as neuroscientist isn't especially relevant. He is known mainly as an author who is a spokesman for the "New Atheism" movement. So, if he has made important discoveries in neuroscience for which he has been heralded by his peers, then these should be detailed, otherwise his day job is irrelevant and should be only briefly mentioned in the section on his personal life.77Mike77 (talk) 21:21, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
Wow, that comment was like watching a holy roller rolling in reverse. Talk about ideological bias!77Mike77 (talk) 04:26, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Okay, fair enough. But it has to recognized that his day job as a neuroscientist gives his metaphysical speculations no more credibility than if his day job were book-keeping or bee-keeping.77Mike77 (talk) 01:27, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
You missed the point. There is a tacit implication that his day job as a neuroscientist somehow informs his guesswork on metaphysical questions, thereby lending credibility to them, whereas the reality is that skill in studying physical phenomena is irrelevant to discussions of metaphysical questions that lie entirely outside of the domain of Science. A neuroscientist's opinions on metaphysics are like an auto mechanic's opinions on classical music. Both are entitled to their opinions, but the day job is irrelevant. Harris seems to wear the mantle of "neuroscientist" as if this somehow adds credibilty to his ideological prejudices. This article pushes that false impression. His day job should appear as a detail of his Personal Life. My original question asked what significant achievements, prizes, awards, etc., he has achieved as a neuroscientist that would make his day job worth mentioning. He is known primarily as being one of the "high priests" of the Anti-Theist metaphysical ideology, and for promoting this in books (so "author" is valid), as well as giving sermons about his belief system (so "public speaker" is also valid). But he is not, to my knowledge, noted for his contributions to neuroscience. Even if he had found a cure for Alzheimer's, it still wouldn't be relevant re his metaphysical speculations that are the only reason this article exists.77Mike77 (talk) 20:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
There is a tacit implication that his day job as a neuroscientist somehow informs his guesswork on metaphysical questions. Harris does work in neuroscience, however his day job is as a writer/communicator. That you keep repeating this line about his day job as a neuroscientist shows that you don't know much about Harris and are not understanding what I wrote above. His work as a neuroscientist probably does inform his views to a certain extent, however. In Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion a large chunk of the book is spent on neuroscience.
he is not, to my knowledge, noted for his contributions to neuroscience. Your knowledge doesn't matter, what matters is what the reliable sources say. If reliable sources say he is a neuroscientist then we will say he is a neuroscientist here. If you want to have this changed then find a representative sample of reliable sources and show that only a small minority of them identify Harris as a neuroscientist. Your bias is starting to show so keep in mind Wikipedia is not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS or to spread WP:TRUTH (however you see it). Rather, Wikipedia presents information that is WP:VERIFIABLE. You've been here for a few years so none of this should be new to you.Sizeofint (talk) 02:41, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
I do realize that ideologues on wikipedia categorically disallow any alteration to their sacred works, and that there is always a WP:WHATEVER that can be construed to prevent heretical changes no matter what.77Mike77 (talk) 19:12, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
@Xenophrenic: What sources state he is the above? Apollo The Logician (talk) 10:03, 25 February 2017 (UTC) Apollo The Logician (talk) 10:03, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
He's not. A few reliable sources call him a philosopher (in deference to his self-description), and now, people are concocting a whole mythos about his philosophical career and expertise. It must be the words "science" and "mind" in "philosophy of science" and "philosophy of mind" that foster such a mistaken assumption. I think we need more of an effort to put the brakes on such rampant speculation. BabyJonas (talk) 21:07, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
The box on the right says that he's born April 9, 1967 , but in the text itself, it says he's born April 9, 1957. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kdemetter (talk • contribs) 09:10, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
I checked the records at https://familysearch.org/ , and I can confirm no records of a Samuel B Harris at that location on April 9, 1957, but I can confirm a record at April 9, 1967, with the mother's name Spivak. So I'm correcting the year mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kdemetter (talk • contribs) 09:19, 9 April 2017 (UTC)
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Footnote #16 references a "The Guardian" article by Christopher Hitchens, which supposedly supports the assertion that Sam Harris has declared that his "upbringing was entirely secular,[16]". The actual text in the article reads as follows: "Sam Harris, a Jewish warrior against theocracy and bigotry of all stripes, had written that it was often fascists who made the most sense when talking about immigration to Europe." In context, Hitchens uses two quotes (the above one from Harris and another one by Jack Straw) to defend his stance on Islam and how deeply incompatible this religion/political system is with western civilization and its values. However, nowhere does the article provide us with the much needed proof (i.e. a self proclamation by Sam Harris) that Harris' "upbringing was secular". In the Jewish tradition you are considered a Jew if your mother is a Jew while the father's religious/ethnic background (although it is preferred to be Jewish as well) does not determine your "Jewish-ness". Given that: i) Harris' mother, Susan Harris (nee Spivak), is 100% a Jew, ii) Harris was raised exclusively by his mother after the age of two due to her divorcing her non-Jew husband (Berkeley Harris), and iii) both Susan Harris' and her son's Sam Harris' have maintained a very close affiliation with Jewish entities throughout their careers (that is easy to determine just follow their detailed bios), I maintain that Sam Harris is -indeed- a Jew and he should be proud to declare that instead of hiding behind the "atheist" agenda. As far as this wikipedia article itself, that sentence about his "secular upbringing" and the supporting reference, both must be removed as clearly false and misleading. (Posted by XwpisONOMA(at)gMail(dot)com on Friday, April 21, 2017.)
I agree with Stigmatella aurantiaca's comment in this edit summary - the material that was removed and re-added is rather promotional. But I think that applies even more strongly to the list of guests for the show, especially since the list is based on a non-independent source. For that matter, most of the information about the podcast comes from a non-independent source.
Regardless, since I think that this is the proper place to discuss this and find consensus, I'm creating this section. Guettarda (talk) 13:25, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
I agree with the take on an long ever growing list of guests. However, since the start of the podcast Harris have had two recurring guests, one two times and another three times. Harris mentions these and single them out in an episode. Maybe, not a list, but stating a couple of recurring guests is a good discriptive way of stating the sort of conversations he has with guests. Fallacious Leek (talk) 10:40, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't see how anyone can justify purging the article of almost all criticism of Sam Harris, since that would seem to be a rather obvious NPOV violation. Sure, other articles also (inevitably) cover some of these same issues, but the NPOV principle isn't satisfied by only having balance in a few of the articles: it means every article should present multiple points of view. AgeOfPlantagenet (talk) 23:46, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
I asked for some input at Talk:Social justice warrior. If anyone more familiar with Sm Harris than I could add some input/feedback, I would appreciate it. Knox490 (talk) 16:06, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Ddzzmm, a brand new user, is adding material to the article that emphasizes as much as possible Sam Harris's interest in psychedelic drugs. He has tried to make the lead state that, "He is concerned with matters that touch on religion, morality, neuroscience, psychedelics, free will and terrorism", and added "psychedelic drugs" as one of Harris' main interests in the infobox, alongside "Neuroscience, religion, ethics, spirituality". In my opinion this behavior of Ddzzmm is inappropriate and utterly unacceptable and violates the intention of WP:BLP. Harris may have discussed psychdelic drugs among other topics, but it definitely is not one of the things he is most noted for, and over-emphasizing the issue in this fashion is a good example of something WP:BLP is meant to prevent. Note that removal of BLP-violating material is exempt from the usual three revert rule. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:27, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
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Not all of his published works should be there. Personally, I'd opt for at least removing Lying, which to my knowledge garnered neither significant critical attention nor notable literary awards. One could go further and note that this parameter is ideal when there is actually clear agreement among critics on which works are most important, a state of affairs that I think does not yet apply with Harris. At this point, I consider it best for relevant facts about all of the books to simply be mentioned in the lead section's text. AndrewOne (talk) 13:05, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
Sam has given TED talks (one on Islam and one on AI). Those are notable public talks worthy of mention in Sam's Wiki page. His views on AI are also worth a few descriptive sentences given AI is something Sam talks about with some regularity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.89.114.63 (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
Sam Harris's recent public discussion with Ezra Klein has led to inclusion on this page of Race & IQ as a "topic of concern". While this exploration may be relevant enough to have a section in "views" (as it now does), indicating in the intro paragraph alongside his topics of greatest focus and expertise that he is "concerned with matters of...racial differences in intelligence..." is a misrepresentation of his priorities and views. In the long and descriptive exchange between Harris and Klein, he asserts numerous times that his podcast with Charles Murray (which spurred this controversy) was an attempt at validating intellectual honesty, rather than an interest or expertise in exploring racial differences in intelligence.
For this reason, I recommend removing "racial differences in intelligence" from the introductory list of concerns that serve to frame his body of work. If this public conversation/controversy illuminates any concern, and the community feels that it is important to have some aspect of this conversation reflected in the introduction, adding "intellectual honesty" or "intellectual ethics" would be a more honest representation of his position. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CamerCM (talk • contribs) 15:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
I have to agree with editors CamerCM, IP:91.196.194.224 and Ceoil above, that this is an issue of intellectual honesty in science, and the Race & Intelligence field isn't an area in which Harris is active. In fact, he states that he doesn't have an interest in intelligence differences across races, has criticized others who do, and that his podcast was only "to correct what I perceived to be a terrible injustice done to an honest scholar. Having attempted that, for better or worse, I will now move on to other topics." The entry was also misleadingly written, claiming "Harris has argued that there are racial differences in intelligence...", when he never presented any arguments; he merely reiterated undisputed facts which even Klein doesn't contest (although Klein draws different conclusions from those same facts). If Harris ever does formulate arguments regarding this subject matter, we can revisit the proposal to add those views to the article if they are significant. Xenophrenic (talk) 07:56, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
I've removed a sentence that says only that Harris had a debate. That is not only not encyclopedic, but is completely uninformative. Xenophrenic (talk) 18:45, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
You are invited to participate in this AfD discussion about whether to delete Intellectual Dark Web. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 22:09, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
Why is there immense fear by the editors of this page to dare mention Harris' interest in psychedelics? He has a number of podcasts on the subject, he has written and spoken about them extensively, has multiple Big Think videos on them, and has spoken about how they have changed his life path. Ddzzmm (talk) 18:53, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
There is an entire section on his views on "Indian tradition," which he rarely discusses, unlike psychedelics. I'm simply wondering why topics that are consistently brought up in Harris' podcast (go to his list of podcasts and search for the term 'psychedelic' and you'll find multiple podcasts involving the topic) are censored from this page, whereas his views on "Indian tradition" have little to do with him or his work. If given good reason as to why a topic that has changed his life path from an English major to one of the most well-known neuroscientists and philosophers [1], has an entire chapter in Waking Up about them, and brings them up in podcasts that don't even involve psychedelics (see the podcast with him, Ben Shapiro, and Eric Weinstein, doesn't belong on this page, section 2.3 certainly doesn't belong. Could someone please shed light on this? It makes zero sense. Ddzzmm (talk) 19:07, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
Hi all, answering your request for a third opinion. Ddzzmm it doesn't appear that anyone in this conversation is telling you that you can't include the material, it just needs to comply with wikipedia's guidelines on citation. Additionally, it looks like you previously included the material under "spirituality", maybe a less objectionable move would be to create your own section for the material, as I believe the editor that didn't agree with it may have felt it just wasn't appropriate for the section on spirituality. Please review WP:RS and WP:BLP. After that, I would encourage you to write a section on Harris's views on psychedelics. If you continue to face resistance from other editors, please consider pinging them on the talk page to discuss further, as it appears the editors that reverted your changes is not present in this discussion. †Basilosauridae❯❯❯Talk 19:57, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
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Hi. Emir of Wikipedia and I have been discussing the use of the subject's full name in this biography over here, if anyone else has thoughts. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:14, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Gosh! I think it was a bit quick to revert me, it was thoughtful and considered (and I may start crying), is it trivial to mention: [5] There will be some other adjustments to be made if it is. cygnis insignis 08:27, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
The opening sentence is misleading, implying that he is primarily a scientist or academic rather than a skilled writer and speaker.
My proposed reordering of the opening (refs omitted here) is thus:
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an author, public intellectual, blogger, and podcast host primarily known for his criticism of religion. His academic background is in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience. --WriterArtistDC (talk) 14:46, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
The general tone of this article has what I would call the "soft bias" of allowing Sam Harris's own writings and statements to predominate in the content. Everything said may be valid, but should not give the appearance of conflict of interest bordering on self-promotion. This is noted in the placement of the "third party" tag on the "Views" section, but I think it may warrant a stronger NPOV tag on the article as a whole.
This may be the result of eliminating the more clearly biased opinions of his ideological opponents, which are likely not up to WP standards regarding reliable sources. However, there are glaring omissions, in particular Harris's very public disagreement on free will with fellow new atheist Daniel Dennett. Since they are both philosophers who have turned to neuroscience, their disagreement is very technical, and beyond my ability to summarize, not being an expert in either discipline. --WriterArtistDC (talk) 02:35, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
--WriterArtistDC (talk) 15:12, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
I am not much interested in seriously editing this article, although having access to a university library it is easy for me to find references others may use, and I may continue to post them here. Morality, free will, and the problems caused by religious belief interest me, and I have read Harris' books with enjoyment. However, I have also read the books by the other "horsemen" and consider them the source of a deeper and more complete understanding of these topics. I am not a philosopher, so as I indicated above I do not think I understand the philosophical issues separating Harris and Dennett. As a social scientist, I agree with Dennett on how the mind works, and thus with his view of free will. In my 12 years of editing I have generally avoided biographies of living persons as problematical, giving unbiased summaries of such controversies being an example.
PS. If I were to contribute to a BLP, it would be Patricia Churchland, which is only a "C" article and has a similar maintenance tag placed in 2012. I see coverage bias in the attention given to a male "public intellectual" while a female academic doing significant work in the same field is neglected by WP.--WriterArtistDC (talk) 04:43, 7 July 2019 (UTC)