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Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Tse on Harris

Peter Ulrich Tse is a neuroscientist (PhD, Harvard) as well as an atheist (naturalism). Tse writes the following about Sam Harris:

Eddy, I just read your incisive review of Harris' book. I agree 100%. Please do not take Harris to be speaking for neuroscience or neuroscientists. As far as I can tell he does not lead a lab and is not a tenured or tenure-track professor of neuroscience at any university, although he did get a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA after getting a BA in philosophy, according to wikipedia, and has a couple of scientific papers using MRI to look at religious belief in the brain. He seems to primarily be a writer of provocative books who has some background in neuroscience. But judging from the way he writes about brain events in his pugilistic pamphlet 'Free Will,' it is not a very nuanced view of the astounding complexity of causation among neurons. I think most people in the neuroscience trenches running experiments day in and day out would have assumed he was more of a philosopher or public debater than a professor of neuroscience.

1 comment:

  1. Agree with Peter Tse 100%, because I have the free will to do so.

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