Sam Harris

Harris was born on April 9, 1967 in Los Angeles.[6] He is the son of actor Berkeley Harris, who appeared mainly in Western films, and TV writer and producer Susan Harris (née Spivak), who created The Golden Girls among other series.[7] His father, born in North Carolina, came from a Quaker background, and his mother is Jewish but not religious.[8] He was raised by his mother following his parents' divorce when he was aged two.[9] Harris has stated that his upbringing was entirely secular and that his parents rarely discussed religion, though he also stated that he was not raised as an atheist.[10]

While his original major was in English, Harris became interested in philosophical questions while at Stanford University after an experience with the empathogen–entactogen MDMA (colloquially known as ecstasy).[11][12][13] The experience led him to be interested in the idea that he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the use of drugs.[14] Leaving Stanford in his second year, a quarter after his psychedelic experience, he visited India and Nepal, where he studied meditation with teachers of Buddhist and Hindu religions,[14][15] including Dilgo Khyentse.[16] Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000.[17][18][19] Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith, immediately after the September 11 attacks.[17]

He received a Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles,[17][20][21] using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty.[17][21] His thesis was titled The Moral Landscape: How Science Could Determine Human Values. His advisor was Mark S. Cohen.[22]

Reception of Harris's ideas has spanned a range of topics and come from a variety of journalistic and academic sources.

Harris's first two books, in which he lays out his criticisms of religion, received negative reviews from Christian scholars.[49][63][64] From secular sources, the books received a mixture of negative reviews[65][66][67] and positive reviews.[68][69][70][71] In his review of The End of Faith, American historian Alexander Saxton criticized what he called Harris's "vitriolic and selective polemic against Islam," (emphasis in original) which he said "obscure[s] the obvious reality that the invasion of Iraq and the War against Terror are driven by religious irrationalities, cultivated and conceded to, at high policy levels in the U.S., and which are at least comparable to the irrationality of Islamic crusaders and Jihadists."[65] By contrast, Stephanie Merritt wrote of the same book that Harris's "central argument in The End of Faith is sound: religion is the only area of human knowledge in which it is still acceptable to hold beliefs dating from antiquity and a modern society should subject those beliefs to the same principles that govern scientific, medical or geographical inquiry - particularly if they are inherently hostile to those with different ideas."[68]

Harris's next two books, which discuss philosophical issues relating to ethics and free will, received several negative academic reviews.[72][73][74][75][76][77] In his review of The Moral Landscape, neuroscientist Kenan Malik criticized Harris for not engaging adequately with philosophical literature: "Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as 'adaptation', 'speciation', 'homology', 'phylogenetics' or 'kin selection' would 'increase the amount of boredom in the universe'. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument?"[75] Philosopher Daniel Dennett argued that Harris's book Free Will successfully refuted the common understanding of free will, but that he failed to respond adequately to the compatibilist understanding of free will. Dennett said the book was valuable because it expressed the views of many eminent scientists, but that it nonetheless contained a "veritable museum of mistakes" and that "Harris and others need to do their homework if they want to engage with the best thought on the topic."[78] On the other hand, The Moral Landscape received a largely positive review from psychologists James Diller and Andrew Nuzzolilli.[79] Additionally Free Will received a mixed academic review from philosopher Paul Pardi who acknowledged that while it suffers from some conceptual confusions and that the core argument is a bit too 'breezy', it serves as a "good primer on key ideas in physicalist theories of freedom and the will".[80]

Harris's book on spirituality and meditation received mainly positive reviews[81][82][50][52] as well as some mixed reviews.[83][51] It was praised by Frank Bruni, for example, who described it as "so entirely of this moment, so keenly in touch with the growing number of Americans who are willing to say that they do not find the succor they crave, or a truth that makes sense to them, in organized religion."[81]

Harris has been accused of Islamophobia by journalist Glenn Greenwald and linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky.[84][85] Greenwald claimed that Harris's Islamophobia is revealed by his statements such as: "the people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists," and "[t]he only future devout Muslims can envisage — as Muslims — is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, politically subjugated, or killed."[84] After Harris and Chomsky exchanged a series of emails on terrorism and U.S. foreign policy in 2015, Chomsky said Harris had not prepared adequately for the exchange and that this revealed his work as unserious.[86] Kyle Schmidlin also wrote in Salon that he considered Chomsky the winner of the exchange because Harris's arguments relied excessively on thought experiments with little application to the real world.[86] In a 2016 interview with Al Jazeera, Chomsky further criticized Harris, saying he "specializes in hysterical, slanderous charges against people he doesn’t like."[85]

Harris has argued that his views on this and other topics are frequently misrepresented by critics and has accused some of his critics of deliberately taking quotes out of context.[87] He has also criticized the way the term Islamophobia is commonly used.[88] "My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences, but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people,"[89] he wrote following a disagreement with actor Ben Affleck in October 2014 on the show Real Time with Bill Maher. Affleck had described Harris's views on Muslims as "gross" and "racist," and his statement that "Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas" as an "ugly thing to say."[90][91] Several conservative American media pundits in turn praised Harris and host Bill Maher for broaching the topic, asserting that it had become taboo.[91]

Harris's dialogue on Islam with Maajid Nawaz received a combination of positive reviews[92][93][94] and mixed reviews.[95][96] Irshad Manji wrote: "Their back-and-forth clarifies multiple confusions that plague the public conversation about Islam." Of Harris specifically, she said "[he] is right that liberals must end their silence about the religious motives behind much Islamist terror. At the same time, he ought to call out another double standard that feeds the liberal reflex to excuse Islamists: Atheists do not make nearly enough noise about hatred toward Muslims."[96]

In April 2017, Harris stirred controversy by hosting the social scientist Charles Murray on his podcast, discussing topics including the heritability of IQ and race and intelligence.[97] Harris stated the invitation was out of indignation at a violent protest against Murray at Middlebury College the month before and not out of particular interest in the material at hand.[97] The podcast episode garnered significant criticism, for instance from Vox[37][98] and Slate.[99] Harris and Murray were defended by conservative commentators Andrew Sullivan[100] and Kyle Smith,[101] as well as by neuroscientist Richard Haier, who stated that the points Murray claimed were mainstream indeed enjoyed broad scientific support.[102] Harris and Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein later discussed the affair in a podcast interview,[103] where Klein criticized Harris for rebuking tribalism in the form of identity politics while failing to recognize his own version of tribalism.[104] Hatewatch staff at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) wrote that members of the "skeptics" movement, of which Harris is "one of the most public faces," help to "channel people into the alt-right."[105] Bari Weiss wrote that the SPLC had misrepresented Harris's views.[35]

Harris was profiled by Weiss in The New York Times as part of the "Intellectual Dark Web" (a term coined semi-ironically by Eric Weinstein). She described the group as "a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation — on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums — that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now."[35] In November 2020, Harris stated that he does not identify as a part of that group.[60]

In 2018, Robert Wright published an article in Wired criticizing Harris for, despite claiming to be a champion of rationality, ignoring his own cognitive biases and engaging in faulty and inconsistent arguments in his book The End of Faith. He wrote that "the famous proponent of New Atheism is on a crusade against tribalism but seems oblivious to his own version of it." Wright wrote that these biases are rooted in natural selection and impact everyone, but that they can be mitigated when acknowledged, whereas he said Harris offered no such acknowledgement.[104]

The UK Business Insider included Harris's podcast in their list of "8 podcasts that will change how you think about human behavior" in 2017,[106] and PC Magazine included it in their list of "The Best Podcasts of 2018."[107] In January 2020, Max Sanderson included Harris's podcast as a "Producer pick" in a "podcasts of the week" section for The Guardian.[33]

Harris is a martial arts student and practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu.[111][112]

Harris has been reluctant to discuss personal details such as where he now lives, citing security reasons.[113] In 2004, he married Annaka Harris, an author and editor of nonfiction and scientific books.[114] They have two daughters.[115][116]

In September 2020, Harris became a member of Giving What We Can, an effective altruism organization whose members pledge to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities, both as an individual and as a company with Waking Up.[40][39]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sam Harris.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Sam Harris

• Official website
• Sam Harris at TED
• Sam Harris at IMDb
• Library resources in your library and in other libraries by Sam Harris