Philosophical Speculations

Once you accept that there is a subjectivity that is not generated by matter, and only the qualia appearing in that subjectivity is generated by matter, you're already in at least cartesian dualist territory. It's incompatible with materialism, plain and simple. Materialists do indeed think that su...

https://youtu.be/6TiFP_ghABo In this excerpt of a talk from his Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris discusses how the purely subjective aspect of consciousness has a continuity that elides any gaps in experience, including — quite possibly — the gap of death. To illustrate this, he quotes extensively f...

So perhaps make the same suggestion on the EF website and/or Facebook page as well, just for good measure. Thanks, Dana. I don't do Facebook, but might check out the Essentia option. His debate with Jordan Peterson went nowhere for that reason Yes, I watched all four of them a while back and agree ...

Absolutely, same with out-of-body experiences and veridical perception during NDEs. Those "mere anecdotes" (as naysayers typically call them) are still data that need to be taken into account when assigning the provenance of consciousness. Speaking of NDEs, here's an interesting panel disc...

Incidentally, on that last note above, if everyone on this forum would go to Sam's website and submit a request for him to have a "Waking Up" dialogue with BK, it might help get this closer to happening. I did so some time ago.

Yes, Harris is still basically a physicalist, albeit one who's got enough meditation experience and insight to be more sensitive to the significance of consciousness than many other popular and vocal physicalists. He's just not able to make the leap from phenomenological primacy to ontological prima...

Hello everyone, Just want to share a YouTube clip from the interview Sam Harris did of Rupert Spira some time back. (The full version is available through Harris's Waking Up app, which I understand not everyone will be motivated to sign up for; hence the free excerpt.) Note that this is the same bri...