Portrait of Sam Harris

Sam Harris

Philosopher, Neuroscientist, and Author
Born: April 9, 1967

Sam Harris is an American author, neuroscientist, and public intellectual known for tackling some of the most controversial questions in religion, morality, and human consciousness. Rising to prominence with his 2004 bestseller The End of Faith, Harris became one of the leading voices in the “New Atheism” movement, critiquing organized religion while advocating for reason, science, and secular ethics. With a background in philosophy and a Ph.D. in neuroscience, he brings an unusual combination of scientific rigor and philosophical curiosity to topics ranging from free will and morality to meditation and the nature of mind.

Beyond his books, Harris hosts the popular Making Sense podcast, where he interviews thinkers across disciplines, and founded Waking Up, a meditation app blending mindfulness practice with explorations of consciousness. He is both celebrated and criticized for his willingness to challenge sacred cows—religious, political, and cultural alike—while maintaining that honest inquiry is worth the discomfort it often causes. Whether discussing the neuroscience of belief, the ethics of artificial intelligence, or the benefits of non-dual awareness, Harris remains a polarizing yet influential figure in modern intellectual life.

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Mentioned in 2 documents

Elon Musk and Joe Rogan

Human Civilization and AI

Musk and Rogan discuss the existential risk of uncontrolled artificial intelligence. They explore possibilities for regulation and oversight, the potential for human-AI symbiosis through brain-computer interfaces, and the philosophical implications of advanced AI surpassing human intelligence.

Francis Heylighen and Shima Beigi

Mind Outside Brain

We approach the problem of the extended mind from a radically non-dualist perspective. The separation between mind and matter is an artefact of the outdated mechanistic worldview, which leaves no room for mental phenomena such as agency, intentionality, or feeling. We propose to replace it by an action ontology, which conceives mind and matter as aspects of the same network of processes. By adopting the intentional stance, we interpret the catalysts of elementary reactions as agents exhibiting desires, intentions, and sensations. Autopoietic networks of reactions constitute more complex super-agents, which moreover exhibit memory, deliberation and sense-making. In the specific case of social networks, individual agents coordinate their actions via the propagation of challenges. The distributed cognition that emerges from this interaction cannot be situated in any individual brain. This non-dualist, holistic view extends and operationalises process metaphysics and Eastern philosophies. It is supported by both mindfulness experiences and mathematical models of action, self-organisation, and cognition.