My impression is that he didn’t really get that far to consider this. Harris was interested in first making it fully clear (for him) what Chomsky thinks the moral responsibility is in clear hypothetical examples.
Chomsky meant that he had already addressed this sufficiently, and seemed more interested in getting an apology and insulting Harris(!).
I find Chomsky’s opinion in itself really interesting. And it’s a rather radical opinion. As I understand it, he seems to be saying that the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceuticals plant to be morally worse than the 9-11 attacks, and by extension implying that Clinton is a worse person than Osama Bin Laden (or at least equally bad). This cannot be something that many people believe, can it?
Anyway, I don’t have a problem with this opinion in itself, but a problem with the way he debates. He especially loses me at this part:
(Sam Harris has put up an unrealistic hypothetical, in order to attempt to discuss moral principles)
“And in particular, I am sorry to see your total refusal to respond to the question raised at the outset of the piece you quoted. The scenario you describe here is, I’m afraid, so ludicrous as to be embarrassing. It hasn’t even the remotest relation to Clinton’s decision to bomb al-Shifa – not because they had suddenly discovered anything remotely like what you fantasize here, or for that matter any credible evidence at all, and by sheer coincidence, immediately after the Embassy bombings for which it was retaliation, as widely acknowledged. That is truly scandalous.”
This is a direct refusal to try and understand what the other person is trying to say with their hypothetical, and with three insults put on top. To me this seems like something I would expect from a drunken argument perhaps, not in an email correspondence from a tenured professor.
My conviction is that Chomsky did understand what the person was trying to say. I sympathize with Chomsky’s frustration at Harris’s willingness to discuss hypothetical situations rather than actual ones and to turn a factual debate into a sterile war of attrition.
LOL, Chomsky did say from the outset I don’t want to debate you. And Harris was so eager to debate!!! And Chomsky just kept insulting him! Maybe Harris learned something, at the end of the day results matter more than intentions and maybe he will rethink his position on Clinton. I know I did, thanks to that discourse.
/Arnie mode/ Chomsky’s been doing this a long time - he eats tenured professors for breakfast.
On a serious note, it might be interesting to look at opportunities Harris missed to pick holes in Chomsky’s argument. It seems like quite a big chunk of the debate is the argument about the significance of intention.
Chomsky seems to be saying that even the most evil monsters have good intentions and he gives the examples of the Japanese and Hitler. I guess we could also include more modern examples like al Qaeda or ISIS or the Taliban.
By their own terms ISIS’s intentions are good - they want to create the perfect religious state and they believe this is mandated by their religion. Chomsky says there isn’t much point at looking at intentions because everyone has (what they see) as good intentions. But is it really the case that there is no objective difference between the intentions of, say, the Nazis and, say, the modern US?
I realise that one should always be sceptical about the motivations of state actors. They generally act in their own self interest regardless of the consequences but does Chomsky seem to be downplaying the difference to the point where the intentions mean absolutely nothing?
What about the abolition of slavery? A lot of people died during that process. Wars were fought against those who wanted to retain the right to keep slaves. Surely the motivations of the anti-slavery people are relevant to the situation?
Harris makes the point that intentions are important in deciding future policy. We don’t exactly know what jihadist groups will do next but we can guess at what they would like to do and therefore future policy dictates that they be contained as far as possible.
Overall, Chomsky is right. Intentions take back seat to consequences. It’s easy to lie/pretend that your intentions are good when they are not. But to equate Clinton to Bin Laden or Hitler is just plain crazy.
Which is what he is doing. Or actually he is saying that Clinton is worse than Bin Laden. Right? Because (1 - consequences) Clinton caused more deaths, and (2 - intentions) Clinton looks at the people like ants, which according to Chomsky is worse than seeing them as people and desiring to kill them. At least that’s how I understand him here.
Did he compare Clinton to Hitler, though? He just said Hitler had his own good intentions. (I admit I just skimmed their debate.) And I think any national leader is going to be worse than the cave dwelling leader of a backwards clan of violent criminals, just by virtue of the massive amount of resources at their disposal to cause harm with. It was simply not possible for Bin Laden to do the kind of harm Clinton could do each morning with a pen if he had wanted. And sometimes, unfortunately, that’s what he wanted.
I’d go so far as to assume that almost all national leaders who have ever existed have been worse, morally, than almost any “regular” criminal. Serial killers, rapists, people who have torture dungeons in their basement, none of them even come close to causing the pain and suffering and death a national leader can cause without even thinking about it.
[QUOTE=Sam Harris]
I would strongly urge you to edit what you have already written, removing unfriendly flourishes such as “as you know”, “the usual procedure in work intended to be serious,” “ludicrous and embarrassing,” “total refusal,” etc.
[/QUOTE]
…
[QUOTE=Sam Harris] Despite your apparent powers of telepathy, I am not “evading” anything.
[/QUOTE]
I think both of them come off pretty poorly in this exchange, although I think Chomsky comes off considerably worse for his attempted elision of a direct point. Even without knowing he’s a professor of linguistics, it’s clear. Who else could write so fervently and fluidly while failing to establish a clear claim.
It does look like Harris approached this with honest intentions and a willingness to consider changing his mind, and Chomsky simply brought contempt for the entire concept. That said, Harris chiding Chomsky for hostile quips after (1), he stated that he wasn’t interested in having a debate, and (2) Harris does the same to most of his debate opponents, comes off as peevish. I honestly think that Harris doesn’t realize he’s doing this, or considers his rhetorical deflections charming and engaging, but others’ in poor faith. But I wish he’d quit it.
On the substantive topic they danced around, I think Chomsky’s point that outcomes matter more than intentions is valid, but I would have liked to see further discussion, because Harris has a response for this issue. He’s discussed the morality of intention in war before, particularly with respect to human shields. You cannot colocate a military-grade target with a humanitarian establishment and assign full moral blame to an attacker who hits both. The US does not surround its military bases with schools and hospitals. We do not manufacture war materiel in the same compound as pharmaceuticals. Some of our enemies do, and they do so because, in direct contradiction to Chomsky’s claims, they know it gives us pause, that we don’t want to harm innocents. And then we often do anyway.
FWIW, here’s what a very prominent atheist thinks of the debate:
And I think that all the posts above about intentions, Hitler, etc. would make a good new thread in GD. My immediate impressions are
a) Just because there’s a Godwin’s Law doesn’t mean that very smart people (which Chomsky undoubtedly is, whether you agree with him or not) can’t find a correct context to invoke Hitler. If you dismiss him out of hand for doing it, without taking the time to understand him (and it’s very difficult to understand some of his points when he is sending emails to someone he doesn’t like and just touching on arguments that he has explained in detail in other writings), it may be your loss.
b) I tend to agree with Chomsky about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. There are all kinds of commandments in the Bible that, if strictly applied, would result in just about everybody but the most fanatically observant Jews being executed, and the most fanatic Christians could probably find some reason to take care of them, as well. It has become fashionable for modern Christians to pretend that those verses were never relevant to them, but history clearly shows that they are wrong, and even today a sizable proportion of Christians wants selected Mosaic Laws to serve as our moral guide.
And after 2000 years, it’s still evolving rapidly. The current attitudes toward gay marriage would have seemed amazing/disgusting to the average American just 20 years ago, and the fact that an ultra-conservative Supreme Court might rule in its favor would have been unbelievable.
I haven’t read the full articles where Chomsky makes his argument about Clinton v. Hitler, so I’m not ready to say I agree with him. But I can certainly appreciate an argument that Bush, who started a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people just so he could look tough and be a “War President,” is more despicable than Bin Laden, who was following his interpretation of holy scriptures.
I’m glad someone else responded, because I think this is an interesting discussion.
I think that Harris’s broad point about intentions mattering in moral calculus is true. There’s clearly a moral difference between
An act that is intended and expected to not harm others, but does.
An act that is intended toward another goal, but is expected to harm others and does.
An act that is intended to and expected to harm others, and does.
Harris makes good use of this when discussing the ethics of war and the use of human shields. Firing from behind women and children because you know that your opponents will be reluctant to strike back out of a desire not to harm innocents does demonstrate a moral difference between the two sides.
That said, I don’t think you can make a credible argument that US is making a moral calculation that considers the lives of innocents in other countries even remotely as valuable as our geopolitical interests.
Godwin’s law is well-suited to the average level of discourse of an internet rage-storm, but reasonable people can certainly refer to Hitler without their argument becoming a farce. If someone states a moral principle, it’s reasonable to consider how it would work as applied to or by our greatest villain.
I have to wonder how open that prominent atheist is to Harris’s ideas, given that he chose to present Harris’s thoughts in Comic Sans.
Myers has been an outspoken opponent of some of Harris’s views about religion and sex for at least a few years (I believe you can search his blog at the link given in my previous post, if you’re interested), so there is no love lost between them. But it’s entirely possible to be open to someone’s ideas, and still strongly disagree with them after you’ve evaluated them.
What’s an unfriendly flourish? Is Harris saying that Chomsky is intentionally talking down to Harris, so that he (Chomsky) would appear as if he’s winning the debate?
I got a chuckle out of the “apparent powers of telepathy” comment. It seems to me that if any one is mindreading his debate opponent, it’s Harris.
It is. But presentation matters. Putting one side’s words into a silly font is a cheap subconscious attempt to make those ideas look silly without a reasoned argument. Having never read Myers before, my first impression is that he’s not commenting in good faith.
Searching his site, I see that he appears to always do this. I’m not saying I think he’s always wrong. Looking at a few other posts, I see a mix:
This post, which appears to simply be an argument against a misreading of a not-very-complicated statement from Harris. Not very impressive.
But also
This post, which makes some good substantive arguments about Harris. I agree with Myers position on torture, and I agree with his and Schneier’s position on profiling.
I think both Myers and Chomsky get too much credit for disregarding Harris’s hypotheticals. Considering extreme and simplified hypothetical circumstances and analogies has long been part of philosophical and ethical debate. It’s a way to strip away the complexity that always accompanies real situations with murky ethics and determine if a principle makes sense. Then you can try to apply those principles to real situations.
I wouldn’t call him a “dilettente.” He’s been practicing meditation for at least a couple of decades, and has gone on silent meditation retreats for periods as long as 3 months. He also has a Ph.D in Neuroscience. He has written some very fascinating things about the nature of the self, of conciousness, and about Free Will.
You sound like someone who has read negative descriptions about Harris, but I’d bet dollars to donuts you haven’t read a single one of his books.
Harris wrote a few lines in one of his books about the morality of using torture in a ticking time bomb scenario. But that’s a far cry from advocating the torture of “icky monotheists” and nuking Mecca.
I’m greatly saddened that Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris couldn’t have had a more substantive debate. They’re both brilliant people, in their own way. Harris seemed to bend over backwards to be polite to Chomsky, but Chomsky did not return the favor.