(The comments on Ed Brayton’s Facebook post about my article are also of interest.)

And people need to understand if they publish something in public, they get criticized in public. They don’t get to control their critics.

See my response to Frosty on this. I agree with Harris on these points (with some caveats), but that does not mean Harris always practices what he preaches, particularly when it comes to philosophical subjects. I find that in philosophy, he almost always sucks. I would conclude that even if he had a Ph.D. in philosophy, though, if that consoles you any (assuming having said degree did not improve the quality of his work). There are certainly many lousy philosophers with said credential, as I noted before. So it’s the work I’m judging, not his quals. And it might come down to this: I think it takes a lot more work to be good at philosophy than Harris realizes.

Thank you, Frosty. That’s a fantastic contribution to the conversation here. I appreciate your taking the time to provide all that!

I agree with all of that, except insofar as it would be qualified by what I say in the first section of chapter 2 of Proving History for the challenges of becoming an expert in history. Though I’m careful not to say this is impossible without degrees, I do outline why there are difficulties in getting the requisite expertise that they don’t mention in the dialogue above, except Harris, who briefly acknowledges part of it (though there is more to consider).

But note that this requires actually studying the field. Harris does not appear to study philosophy. He continually regards it with contempt instead. And he does not seem facile with the techniques of formal or informal logic either. Nor does he appear to have learned what expert philosophers do, such as about the importance of precision or the pitfalls of ambiguity in your semantics. Nor does he interact with actual philosophical progress made in a subject he is discussing, in any way that suggests he has adequately read up on it. Nor does he put anything through professional peer review (not that one must always; but surely once and a while!). And so on.

“Oh no, someone went and told Richard Carrier that I wrote this, and now he’s going to write about it himself! On his own blog! Why can’t he just comment here, where I can control what is and isn’t seen and who can or cannot respond to him?”

I also came out the other end of reading those comments not quite sure whether he considered you a philosopher or not.Very garbled.

On his debates, I would extend the critique of his oral debates to the written one he had with Randall Rauser (sic?). I thought he started off okay, but still felt his rebuttals were poor, and got progressively worse.

no one can claim to be a philosopher who doesn’t have a Ph.D.

Plato would be heartbroken to hear that.

Exactly! Until she retired last year, my wife was an elementary school teacher, and she asked me to visit her classroom a couple of times each year and do Mr. Science kind of demonstrations (lots of dry ice and liquid nitrogen – fourth graders love them some LN!) One question I was often was asked was, “How old you do you have to be before you can be a scientist?” I replied that they could be scientist now, at the age of 9 or 10, as long as they checked their ideas against the real world. One of the great tragedies in this world is that not everyone is a scientist, in that regard. Of course, to make a living doing science would take a bit of study beyond fourth grade, but really anyone can be a scientist.

Similarly, I imagine everyone could be a philosopher too, if only they thought deeply and critically about the questions they were asking.

Perhaps an even greater tragedy is that not everyone is a philosopher.

“I wonder how deep that caveat actually cuts, however, because in my career I have weighed in on a variety of questions that fall outside the official area of my academic expertise, and occasionally I get pushback on this very point: that you don’t have a credential which would cause someone to be confident about your opinions in this area, let’s say, on the topic of religion for instance. But many of these areas simply require that one read the books and be attentive to one’s sources and have conversations with experts, and at a certain point you’re playing the same language game the experts are. It’s certainly appropriate to have humility and be attentive to the frontiers of one’s ignorance — but, you know, in science this really breaks down quite starkly, because I’m surrounded by scientists who simply do not have the academic bona fides you would expect, and yet they are contributing in various areas of science at the highest levels. There are physicists who don’t have PhDs in physics, there are computer scientists who don’t have even college degrees… So at a certain point it’s a matter of how you can function in a given domain, not a matter of what your CV looks like…” [He goes on, but my quote ends at 6’00]

In Harris’ defense, I will also add his write-up of his contentious television exchange with Ben Affleck and Nicholas Kristof, which shows that he practices what he preaches. (Link here, with embedded youtube video: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself ). Affleck accused him and BIll Maher, the host, of anti-Muslim bigotry, and when Harris responds to the charge on his blog, he explicitly makes the issue about arguments, not expertise:

“Of course, Affleck is also being widely reviled as an imbecile. But much of this criticism, too, is unfair. Those who describe him as a mere “actor” who was out of his depth are no better than those who dismiss me as a “neuroscientist” who cannot, therefore, know anything about religion. And Affleck isn’t merely an actor: He’s a director, a producer, a screenwriter, a philanthropist, and may one day be a politician. Even if he were nothing more than an actor, there would be no reason to assume that he’s not smart. In fact, I think he probably is quite smart, and that makes our encounter all the more disheartening.

The important point is that a person’s CV is immaterial as long as he or she is making sense. Unfortunately, Affleck wasn’t—but neither was Kristof, who really is an expert in this area, particularly where the plight of women in the developing world is concerned. His failure to recognize and celebrate the heroism of my friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali remains a journalistic embarrassment and a moral scandal (and I told him so backstage).”

I am including this material because as a long-time reader of both you and Harris I am puzzled why you take so many shots at him for his philosophical work when he clearly attempts to inform himself, engage seriously with the field, and address objections to his own work. He even held an essay contest a while back to encourage rebuttals to his work in morality. He really cares about ideas and dialogue. Perhaps you have a personal history with him that I am not aware of, but I think if you would actually address his work substantively, perhaps by inviting him to participate in an open exchange, you would be surprised at the results. Harris goes out of his way to have exchanges with people who disagree with him, like Daniel Dennett and Noam Chomsky. It would be better than simply saying all the time, “Harris is a terrible philosopher,” “Harris doesn’t care about philosophy,” “Harris doesn’t take philosophy seriously,” “I teach classes on how bad Harris’ philosophy is.” It just sounds petulant.
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The reason this is baffling to you is because you have not taken the time to understand what I’m doing. I cannot fault you for that though, since your time is limited.

There is already too much ignorance here for me to respond to, from both you and your commenters. I could respond to everything you and they have said, easily.

I leave you with this link, that helps to explain some of the criticisms I’ve received:

http://www.debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2015/08/why-haters-hate-kierkegaard-explains.html

Wow. That was bad. I have a hard time saying that. I love his books. I think he has great ideas and knows what he’s about. But that was just…. sad. I’ve never seen any of his other debates etc. Is he always so… spastic? A great orator he is not. That was hard to watch.