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Free Will

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 5,537 ratings · 426 reviews

Belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an i...more

Paperback, 83 pages

Published March 6th 2012 by Free Press

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Apr 19, 2013 Stephanie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, science, brain

I am an agnostic which means I am firm in my belief that I have no idea what to believe. I don't know what is true and what isn't and no one, no matter how strong your faith, or how strong your lack of faith is.....you don't know either. You don't know what happens to you after you die. You pretty much have to die to find that out. You may really, really, really believe little alien souls are attached to your body and making your life miserable, and that the only way to make it all better is to...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: truthiness

Fuck.

I am a stubborn girl, and there are some things I cling to like rope-ladders keeping me from falling into Freddy Krueger's soul swamp, such as possessing some degree of control over my own fate and figuring myself out in a manageable way, but this...this has challenged my perceptions of everything I am, believe, and compulsively stand by in a way which I have not been crossed in I don't even know how long. I don't bend easily, but Harris's argument is a water and light-tight kick in the dic...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Moad rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, atheism

So, Sam Harris an atheist and a neuroscientist

He begins his book by telling a shocking story of how some burglars robbed, child-abused, raped, tortured and set a family's house on fire and killing them apart from the father who survived.
He then says that one of them had shown signs of remorse and attempted suicide a couple of times, and the other had repeatedly been raped as a child, and both of these men had been suffering from brain tumors.

He concludes that if any one of us had been in their...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Riku Sayuj rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Tanuj Solanki

On Free Will & Crime: How should society react to violent crime?

Glancing at the cover might have been more than enough to guess the full contents of this one...

Harris is right to an extent, but as many have already done, his argument is too easy to poke holes in. This is primarily because the argument depends on the definition/boundary that he imposes on it. It makes for a good argument in a monologue but will fall apart in a dialogue.

This is not to say that there is no merit in what he con...more

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Apr 17, 2012 Jacob J. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, philosophy, science, one-sitting

Nietzsche is said to have said that he wished to say more in a couple lines than most philosophers could say in an entire book. The scheme may very well have been met by the great 19th century thinker, as each sentence could be dissected and interpreted in such ways that they beget numerous debates and discussions still. Sam Harris has expressed no such ambition, but if there is a modern philosopher/scientist to whom such a description could be accredited, it would be him (although he may be les...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Simeon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, non-fictions

"You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm." - Sam Harris

"It’s true that human persons don’t have contra-causal free will. We are not self-caused little gods. But we are just as real as the genetic and environmental processes which created us and the situations in which we make choices. The deliberative machinery supporting effective action is just as real and causally effective as any other process in nature. So we don’t have to talk as if we are real agen...more

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May 07, 2012 Levi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction-single-subject

Sam Harris, the wizard of clarity, brings yet another level argument to light. He claims that free will is an illusion, then explains how this need be neither frightening nor destructive (though many seem to think a lack of free will is both). Harris illustrates how the feeling of being in control of our autonomous selves is only that: a feeling.

"Thoughts and intentions simply arise in the mind. What else could they do?" While parts of the book are worth reading slowly because they are not quite...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Chad Kettner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, religion

The only issue I can see people having would be based on semantics over the term "free will" - but as for the actual arguments, Harris seems to be spot-on.

However, I'd love to hear Sam Harris discuss what he thinks would be a better option. As in... how could free will be done better? Would we get to select our brains? Would we get to choose our body? Our gender? And what would make us choose one brain, body, or gender over the other? It seems the decision would still be caused by something beyo...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Fil Correia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

I was worried this would change my mind on free will, it didn't. The author does not make a compelling argument. He seems to make a distinction between our brain's neural state and who we are, there is no such distinction. He states Benjamin Libet's experiment, which demonstrates that there is activity in the brain's motor cortex before the subject feels he decided to move, as proof for the non-existence of free will: a flawed experiment with timing issues but, more than that, since the feeling...more

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Nov 27, 2012 Brian Jo rated it 2 of 5 stars

The author definitely sheds some light on aspects of free will that I never really considered. It is a powerful message that he is trying to convey with the limitations of the length of this book. At times I found myself nodding my head and agreeing with the author, but ultimately, I could not convince myself of his views on free will. His arguments start out very promising, but then falter and lose momentum as he tends to digress with meager examples and statements. I finished the book feeling...more

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Jul 11, 2012 Ryan Lacanilao rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book tackles a topic that is important in the development of a realistic worldview: Do we really have free will? After reading this book, I feel that I understand myself and others better, in a way that is consistent with reality.

I found the chapter on moral responsibility especially compelling.

"Viewing human beings as natural phenomena need not damage our system of criminal justice. If we could incarcerate earthquakes and hurricanes for their crimes, we would build prisons for them as well...more

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May 30, 2012 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychology, philosophy, neuroscience

This book is simply an extremely well written, well constructed treatise into the nature of free will from the perspective of neuroscience and philosophy. Rather than 'dehumanising people' through science, as Sam Harris states that his critics will indefinitely posit, Harris provides an in-depth, well reasoned scientific account of the human decision making process that ultimately serves to humanise us by allowing us the opportunity to understand ourselves better. Aside from the frequent use of...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Xox rated it 5 of 5 stars

Reading this online for the first 2 chapter. My order of the book finally arrived on 3rd week of April 2012.

Chapter 1

"Consider what it would take to actually have free will. You would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to have complete control over those factors. But there is a paradox here that vitiates the very notion of freedom—for what would influence the influences? More influences? None of these adventitious mental states are t...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Joel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like padding my reading challenge with ridiculously short books.

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May 21, 2013 Kathleen Brugger rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a booklet, not a book. I have been pondering the problem of free will for twenty years, it is a central part of the book I am just about to publish, so I was very interested to see what Mr. Harris had to say. I was extremely disappointed.

I was shocked by the shallowness of his arguments. The scientific evidence he draws on are experiments that I read about 15 years ago; I can’t understand why he doesn’t include the copious evidence against free will that neuroscience has amassed in the l...more This is a booklet, not a book. I have been pondering the problem of free will for twenty years, it is a central part of the book I am just about to publish, so I was very interested to see what Mr. Harris had to say. I was extremely disappointed.

I was shocked by the shallowness of his arguments. The scientific evidence he draws on are experiments that I read about 15 years ago; I can’t understand why he doesn’t include the copious evidence against free will that neuroscience has amassed in the last decade. His other arguments seem adolescent or circular. There are no definitions of what “free,” or “free will” mean. He just blithely assumes that the meanings are obvious.

He begins his book with the statement that the cultural clash over the issue of free-will/determinism will be more explosive than that over evolution. But his discussion of the consequences of our culture letting go of the belief in free will is appallingly brief. He addresses the most obvious issue, crime, but that’s about it. Nothing about the more personal issues of shame and pride. Nothing about how this would affect my attitude towards someone who has hurt me, or how it would affect our cultural belief in a meritocracy where people deserve better compensation because of their abilities.

He ends with a flippant “proof” of his lack of free will by saying “I can end this book any time I want, and since I can’t think of anything else to say on the subject and I’m hungry I’m going to stop now.” I could think of a dozen things he hadn’t discussed right off the top of my head!

If you’re interested in free will, don’t read this book. First read Incognito, by David Eagleman, for the latest neuroscience research and what this means about free will. Then read The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, by Alex Rosenberg, for a thoughtful discussion of what no free will means for our society. Then read my new book, We Are ALL Innocent by Reason of Insanity, for insight on what no free will means for the individual, in addition to the culture. You can read my blog posts on free will here: http://www.innocentbyreasonofinsanity...

I did get one memorable idea from Mr. Harris’ book: “Don’t confuse determinism with fatalism,” but he got that idea from someone else (philosopher Daniel Dennett).

Frankly I can’t understand why this book was published. It is so light on substance it should have been a blog post. The only reason I could come up with was Mr. Harris thinks that free will is going to be a major issue in the near future, and he wanted to position himself as an authority and original source.
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May 03, 2013 Joseph rated it 1 of 5 stars

I suppose I ought to begin with the disclaimer that I happen to believe in something like free will (though I won't articulate its complexities here), and this book is an argument against it. Having made that disclaimer, let me say that I am reviewing this book as a scientist and a philosopher, not so much as a religious person. Unfortunately, what this book needs is more time than I'll give it here, but let me summarize the biggest frustrations I had with it.

As a scientist: Sam Harris is very s...more I suppose I ought to begin with the disclaimer that I happen to believe in something like free will (though I won't articulate its complexities here), and this book is an argument against it. Having made that disclaimer, let me say that I am reviewing this book as a scientist and a philosopher, not so much as a religious person. Unfortunately, what this book needs is more time than I'll give it here, but let me summarize the biggest frustrations I had with it.

As a scientist: Sam Harris is very sloppy with his science in this book, citing scientific research that is certainly relevant, but that no scientist worth his or her salt would claim settles the question of free will. He fails here to stick to basic philosophy of science: all scientific studies are interpreted; all results are probabilistic; and all fMRI research is extremely reductionistic. The current research that he cites just cannot do what he wants them to do. I am not saying that his conclusions are wrong; I am saying that his conclusions are stretched farther than the data allow him to go. This is the same kind of fast-and-loose journalism that does little to advance the cause of science and does more to sell books to people already prone to believe Sam Harris.

As a philosopher: this book was an even bigger disappointment for several reasons. My top reason is the fact that his philosophy was even sloppier than his science. His notion of 'free will' - which he never actually defined!! - was a straw man that my 9-year-old could have knocked down. The only people who believe in the free will that Sam Harris critiques here are little children who are constantly crying 'no fair!' and deluded adults (admittedly, many of these are the ultra-conservatives that Harris seems to despise). There is no one that I can think of (and I realize that's not saying much) that would ever argue for his notion of free will. So, his book feels kind of pointless in that respect. (To be fair, he does at one point try to address compatibilism, but he doesn't even define it very well; If one can't make sense of it by reading his book, which is meant to be a critique of it, then it's more of a straw man and less of an argument.)

My second reason is the utter lack of any reference Sam Harris makes of the many philosophers who have addressed 'free will' (thank you, Michelle, for pointing this out). Actually, he does cite one or two - from this past decade. But history has a whole host of philosophers who argue for some sort of free will (albeit, few argued for the sort Harris is opposed to, but that seems to me to be Harris' problem), including many from the 20th century. His avoidance of any serious free will philosophers strikes me as at best a cop out, at worst bad scholarship. I'm voting for 'at worst'.

What Sam Harris ought to own up to is that any argument for or against free will must start and end in philosophy. There can be no empirical evidence for it, nor can there ever be conclusive empirical evidence against (as long as he agrees to the same philosophy of science most scientists adhere to today. Indeed, he seems familiar with it, but likes to play fast and loose here, too: throughout the book, Harris consistently refers to the 'mystery' of where our behaviors come from, acknowledging to some extent the limits of science; then he turns right around and says he's certain it has nothing to do with choice).

If you believe in some sort of free will or agency, this book is not worth reading. It will not challenge you; only irritate you. If you do not believe in free will, then you might enjoy this book - but your enjoyment will be like the empty caloric content of the Twinkie: all filling with no substance. And if you're on the fence about it, find something more sophisticated to read; fortunately, Harris makes that easy for you.(less)

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Apr 13, 2013 Jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars

More of an extended essay than a book, however this was not to its detriment, it is punchy and to the point. This topic has interested me for a long time and Sam Harris has put into words how I have felt for a while. It is obviously a very contentious topic and one has the urge to want to argue against the idea of an absence of free will with all one's might. But just because something isn't nice doesn't mean it's not true. I can no longer deny it, with the advances in understanding of neurophys...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Al Bità rated it 5 of 5 stars

It’s only 66 pages long, with large print, but it comprehensively presents Harris’ arguments justifying his conclusion that we do not have a free will: Free Will is an illusion.

Harris presents his arguments clearly and succinctly; nor does he ignore his critics — he just points out why he believes they are wrong when they try to maintain some remnants of that most cherished belief of humanity, and its greatest ‘sacred cow’.

He is also not afraid to stipulate what this knowledge means for us: the...more

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Feb 19, 2013 Scott Zimmerman rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sam had a pretty easy case to make and he made it. Unfortunately it didn't make for a revolutionary read, because it would be more exciting if he was wrong, and I can't envision a specific way in which he could be wrong. He was just stating the current state of human knowledge: The only ways we know decisions can be made are through rules or randomly. This is how computer programs work, for instance. And 'randomly' is often/always just a subset of rules. The only argument that could be made in f...more Sam had a pretty easy case to make and he made it. Unfortunately it didn't make for a revolutionary read, because it would be more exciting if he was wrong, and I can't envision a specific way in which he could be wrong. He was just stating the current state of human knowledge: The only ways we know decisions can be made are through rules or randomly. This is how computer programs work, for instance. And 'randomly' is often/always just a subset of rules. The only argument that could be made in favor of the existence of free will would be the existence of some completely unheard of third way. And nobody that I know of has proposed such a way except in broadly general terms--god, souls, quantum mechanics, complexity, all of which seem to be just passing the buck to someone or something else which you'd think would be reliant on rules or randomness too. [Granted, if someone did propose a third way, and explained it as well as it could be explained and actually put it into practice and rules had no part in it whatesoever, humans might be too stupid to understand it, the concept might be so thoroughly wild and crazy]

Of course people have this vague 'feeling' that we have free will. But what does a 'feeling' prove about anything? I've had the 'feeling' that dreams of mine have been totally real. Then I woke up. Guess I was wrong. And what would it mean if our body continuously fed us a feeling of just being along for the ride? For that matter, couldn't our body feed us a feeling of all sorts of things, like, for instance, that all of our decisions were actually made by the nearest cat to us? Is there any reason our brain couldn't do that? That wouldn't make the feeling true would it? I suspect some people seem to trust their feelings too much.

I wonder if there is an alternate upside-down Twilight Zone-style universe out there somewhere where there are people like humans, except they have never come up with the concepts of rules or randomness, but they have a firm grasp of how free will exists. Ironically, they are stuck in bodies feeding them a feeling of no free will. Maybe they're reading a book by sam harris, also called ' free will' (which argues that free will DOES exist), yet people are skeptical of the book because they are overwhelmed by a feeling of just being along for the ride, so they all think he's wrong.

Incidentally, Sam does mention how the feeling of free will isn't even that strong in the first place. I agree. I don't know where my thoughts come from. Why do great ideas come to me 3 or 4 years too late sometimes? And why can't I do things like wish pain away? How can something like the norovirus just take over my body. One second I'm healthy, the next second my brain is instructing me to vomit and s**t all over the place. That doesn't feel like free will. That feels like being imprisoned in hell. Why can't I make bad food taste good? Why can't I make a terrible song sound like good song? Why can't I turn my color view of the world into black and white or sepia? The brain has the brainpower to do such a thing. Why won't it let me? I've had my vision spin around while under nitrous oxide. In that case, why couldn't I make my vision normal? Why can't I give myself synesthesia? Why can't I hallucinate on demand? Why don't my eyes have digital zoom?

Even if I could do all of those things, none of those would equate to free will, but it does show just how little power we do have over our consciousness. (And I am aware that some people can claim to turn off pain on demand, etc)
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Feb 07, 2013 Lisa Brandt rated it 4 of 5 stars

I enjoy Sam Harris and thought The End of Faith was one of the most interesting, fascinating non-fiction books I'd ever read. It's funny because when I have tried to explain the concept of this book to other people they don't seem to get it. You have to have it explained by Sam! Still I found it fell a little short on evidence. What he's proposing is such a different way of thinking about thinking that it's difficult for the brain to absorb and accept - well, my brain anyway. I wish he had expan...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Eduard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

Sometimes, being of engineering and scientific mindset, I am somewhat concerned of questions of existence of freedom of will.
It just that I honestly don't know of any physical phenomena in this world with potential of making this metaphysical concept possible.
Even meaning of those words together seems somewhat fishy to me.

Anyways this books gives overview of state of Philosophy around freedom of will, was a surprise to me that apparently in Philosophy there are no place for what I consider to be...more

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Jan 22, 2013 Ryan Hobbiebrunken rated it 2 of 5 stars

Very interesting and I can agree with a lot of Sam's thoughts (well not really HIS thoughts)
I can agree definitely that our trains of thoughts arise due to environmental conditioning. The only issue I see, if I understand him correctly, is if all our trains of thought, which arise in our consciousness, convey the apparent reality of the content of that specific thought, then it seems to me that when a train of thought such as "truth" is also put to the test he puts the thought "free will", then...more Very interesting and I can agree with a lot of Sam's thoughts (well not really HIS thoughts)
I can agree definitely that our trains of thoughts arise due to environmental conditioning. The only issue I see, if I understand him correctly, is if all our trains of thought, which arise in our consciousness, convey the apparent reality of the content of that specific thought, then it seems to me that when a train of thought such as "truth" is also put to the test he puts the thought "free will", then it only exists as a conveyed apparent reality of truth. It may be a thought that gives you the sensation of truth, but can it really be known as absolute certainty? Maybe I'll read it a third time.

Here's a great quote from Michael Ramsden that might make it clearer than my thought.

"Every thought that you have in your head has been determined by the society around you. The things that you think are true are actually simply the result of social conditioning or the result of the out working of your genes or maybe the out working of a particular type of philosophy. In other words, you think you have free thought. You think you can think, but actually you can't think. The thoughts you have are simply the thoughts you have because they're simply the products of the environment in which you live. But there is a problem with that. If every thought in your head is the product of the environment in which you live, then the thought that every thought in your head is the product of the environment in which you live is the product of the environment -if its nothing more than the product of the environment, you're not thinking at all. When anyone claims to tell you that they can reduce your thought into a mechanical process, they seem to be, at the same time, claiming there's a place in which they can stand to see that and make that logical deduction using the thinking process and employing the process of reason. And if its possible to use the process of reason to make the particular deduction based on scientific observation, then you cannot possibly reduce all of it down into some kind of mechanical process because you're actually claiming a position you can stand on which itself isn't reducible into that particular process." -Michael Ramsden

Interesting read though! I'll give it more thought as I'm also reading "moral landscape" so I can understand Harris more. (less)

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Jan 12, 2013 Slappy rated it 2 of 5 stars

(Originally published at www.lastwordbooks.blogspot.com.)

Sam Harris is among the "New Atheist" writers whose ranks include Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and the late Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great). Harris' The End of Faith made a splash a couple years after the 9/11 attacks with its arguments against religion in general and Islam in particular: Harris holds faith to be fundamentally irrational, a bizarre and often destructive ritual in which re...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Mike Owens rated it 4 of 5 stars

A very short book (13,000 words) with a very big and provocative message: the idea that we control our actions through a sequence that begins with a decision to act, ending with the action itself, may be fiction. In other words, free will might well be a myth. It is. of course, very difficult to prove a negative statement, particularly when "hard" evidence is lacking. The only experiments of note, and Harris describes them in detail as have others, are those of Libet (1983) where he showed that...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Ugh rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have no quibbles with this book - and therein lies some of my disappointment with it. I have no quibbles, and I found nothing new. Are there actually people who disagree with anything Harris writes here? He briefly mentions Dan Dennett and a couple of other philosophical dissenters - everything about this book is brief - but would Dennett et al really suggest that criminals should be punished because they deserve it? Surely no clear-thinking, informed person would?

Mr Harris finishes his pamphl...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Martin Pribble rated it 4 of 5 stars

Harris’ book, though only 70 pages long, is a concise look into some of the elements of “free will”, our insistence upon its existence, some of the aspects of free will that impact upon our view of the world, and why, in the end, there is no such thing as free will. I’ve written a bit about this in the past, based on the excerpt from this book which Harris posted on his blog.

While this is only slightly longer than an extended essay, Harris manages to pack in enough food for thought to not only m...more

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Oct 22, 2012 Daniel Namie rated it 4 of 5 stars

“Where people can change, we can demand that they do so. Where change is impossible, or unresponsive to demands, we can chart some other course. In improving ourselves and society, we are working directly with the force of nature, for there is nothing but nature itself to work with.”

--Sam Harris, author of Free Will

Doctor of Philosophy Sam Harris, a professor at the University of Chicago, focuses his book on the concept of free will. Contrary to popular belief, free will within the societal norm...more “Where people can change, we can demand that they do so. Where change is impossible, or unresponsive to demands, we can chart some other course. In improving ourselves and society, we are working directly with the force of nature, for there is nothing but nature itself to work with.”

--Sam Harris, author of Free Will

Doctor of Philosophy Sam Harris, a professor at the University of Chicago, focuses his book on the concept of free will. Contrary to popular belief, free will within the societal norm does not exist. We the people are influence to act and believe what society determines to be appropriate and not appropriate. We, as a society, are governed by the rule of law. Without the rule of law, we have anarchy. Thus, does anarchy parallel true free will? Does the governing body of the juridical system hold each inalienable right hostage for the sole purpose of maintaining an established so-called democracy? Thus, the immediate question that arises is…what is free will?

Sam Harris does not necessarily define free will as a conscious person acting out his/her subconscious desire, but as the reader reads this book entitled “Free Will” one can’t help but come to some rational definition of what actually is free will. Conscious, subconscious, or unconscious, in an overly marketed world, free will does not exist. The will to consume is subliminally casted into our brains from the over consumption of network and cable television advertisements and sitcoms.

Simply walking into a grocery store, we are preprogramed to buy the brand cereal, or ketchup, bread, or Twinkies, or processed meat. Better yet, while driving our over price, gas guzzling cars to our sedentary and un-inspiring jobs, we believe there is no time to make nutritional meals. So, we stop a the nearest neighborhood fast food drive-in and pick-up a Big-Mac supersized meal which includes free refill of the high sugar, high fructose corn-syrup fountain drink. Free will is an illusion played upon fortune 500 companies in order for you to buy there over processed meals.

In someway, pessimism plays its hand in negating the altruism of free will. We want to believe the choice we make for yours, but they are not. Those choices are made for us. Free will, like the rule of law, is a form of control. Law polices our society from going in to anarchy and, the illusions of free will eases the consciousness into believing you are in control of your life. Interestingly, Christian and Muslim belief of surrendering to God’s will is the path to righteousness and freedom. I tend to agree. I agree by accepting that something else is in charge of your life becomes an easier form of reality. And by succumbing to that realization, a sense of freedom emerges and the struggle for self-actualization ends.

Free will can be interpreted as the struggle to self-actualize—to determine who you are as an individual and make the conscious decisions to govern your own life. But, that’s not how society works. We have become too dependent upon each other for our own survival and prosperity that true individualism and free will can and will ever exist. Free will must never exist within a society. The simple cliché too many chiefs and not enough Indians is a clear depiction on how society works. There is a ruling class and a working class. The ruling class is made of a selected few. The working class is everybody else. The best evidence for the pursuit of free will is to be neither the working class nor the ruling class. The ruling class and the working class are a symbiotic relationship. They are ruled by one another. One cannot survive without the other. If the workers don’t work than the rulers will fall. If the rulers fail to lead then the workers will disperse to find new masters. They are one in the same, so to write.

Therefore, the pursuit of free will does not exist within the confines of society but in the outskirts of society. Isolationism is the key to free will. Become totally dependent upon yourself and no ruling class will market your free will. You will be the master of your fate/the captain of your soul.
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Sep 02, 2012 Vanessa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012_read, science, non-fiction

Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills. -- Schopenhauer

The theme of the book is disconcerting at best: Dr. Harris if not completely refutes the notion of free will in this little book of his, does certainly raise a serious contradiction to the longtime conviction that we are the authors of our thoughts. In the very first beginning of the book this theme got dramatically and horrifyingly accentuated when the author suggests, if he were to trade places with Komisarijevsky (one...more 　　Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills. -- Schopenhauer
　　
　　The theme of the book is disconcerting at best: Dr. Harris if not completely refutes the notion of free will in this little book of his, does certainly raise a serious contradiction to the longtime conviction that we are the authors of our thoughts. In the very first beginning of the book this theme got dramatically and horrifyingly accentuated when the author suggests, if he were to trade places with Komisarijevsky (one of the notorious murderers in the Cheshire Connecticut home invasion murders), "atom for atom" he would have acted exactly as Komisarijevsky did.
　　
　　The foundation of refuting the idea that we are in control of our mind is two-folded according to the book. First one is biological: "the brain is a physical system, entirely beholden to the laws of nature -- there is every reason to believe that changes in its functional states and material structure entirely dictate our thoughts and actions"; "we as conscious agents, are only parts of our minds, living at the mercy of other parts". And the second one is that the role of chance plays in our lives: the fact that our thoughts and decisions were largely contributed by the prior experiences and circumstantial contexts, like our births, upbringings, and lucks, all of which we have no control over, can be deduced to a point that we can't control our thoughts and decisions.
　　
　　Many philosophers and theologians are against the disbelieve in free will. The philosophic argument, like the one from Daniel Dennett, bases on the assertion "we are coterminous with everything that goes insider our bodies" so we are responsible for and have free will over what happen inside our bodies, whether we feel conscious about those happening or not. Dr. Harris rebuts this argument by saying this is a bait and switch of a concert, and further ridicules it by saying "we are made of stardust but we don't feel like stardust."
　　
　　The theologian argument is more intense than the philosophic one, since one of the elements of Christianity is the notion of sin, which justify the idea of the punishment, another element of Christianity and the legal system. Refuting free will seems to be opening a can of worms: is it refuting free will also refuting the idea of voluntary evildoing? Is a crime only a product of genetic predisposition, chemical function, and childhood upbringing? It is still fair and justice to penalize criminals? Under this notion, not only capital punishment has to be invalid, other less severe punishments also have to be reconsidered. Crime is much more of a political issue than a social and scientific issue: no politician/law makers would gain interest by being seen as soft on crime. Saying there is a prepositional reason for a crime sounds like defending the criminal, which is always a bad strategy for politicians who running for offices. Dr. Harris didn't delve into the political realm of such a problem, instead of defending the criminals, he defends our souls by saying people who trying to understand the scientific and circumstantial factors dictating a criminal would experience the psychological relief from hating, as he does, when he realizes those predators are more unlucky than they are terrifying.
　　
　　But, there is another woeful question: will denying free will force us all to be fatalistic? Will we completely give up changing our lives? Dr. Harris' answer is a big no. He says losing a belief in free will dose not make him fatalistic, on the contrary, it increases his feelings of freedom. "There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn't draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn't do so on the basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system -- learning news skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention --may radically transform one's life."
　　
　　The author is being optimistic throughout the book, but he isn't being definite; he leaves a lot of questions to be answered at the end of the book. When, at the end, such a disturbing question was purposed but without providing a final answer, I feel the same kind of disconcerting when I started to read the book. Yet it is what science is supposed to make us feel: science does not simplify the world to assure people; it complicates the world to challenge people. No matter whether the theme has proven or not, this book has its own value by being thought-provoking and challenging things that we have always believed. (less)

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Aug 20, 2012 Sally rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

Whether there is free will or not is an open question, but this book throws very little light on the subject. Full of assertions and absolutist thinking, it sets up the problem and the definition of terms in such a way that "no free will" is necessarily the conclusion. If free will means that the conscious mind (the everyday ego or the "monkey mind" of the Buddhists) has to have full awareness, control, and origination of all impulses, thoughts, and desires down to their very furthest roots, the...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Elliot rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy, science

On July 13, Barack Obama reminded an audience that the image of the self-made man is as ill-founded as the conservative ideologies that champion it. "If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own," the President said, "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’v...more On July 13, Barack Obama reminded an audience that the image of the self-made man is as ill-founded as the conservative ideologies that champion it. "If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own," the President said, "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that [i.e. the roads/bridges]. Somebody else made that happen." Oh, how the tongue can betray the heart! My fellow Missourian Rush Limbaugh, among many others, chopped and screwed Obama's unfortunate stutter: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" America heard. Obama's words prompted a half decent tumblr and a hilarious promenade through 20th century philosophy in the Washington Post by my friend Dylan Matthews.

~~Ben Stiller~~ Sam Harris should be happy, sort of. He actually doesn't acknowledge the potential consequences of debunking free will on our welfare system, for example, or the wealth redistribution that supports it -- but he very much could. After all, the best arguments for a welfare system derive from determinism and consequentialism. The intergenerational poor did not choose to be born poor; the newly poor did not choose their lives' events, or their biological/neurological patterns that led them to behave in certain ways. More importantly, justification for or opposition of welfare should rest on empirical data, disregarding notions like "responsibility" or "desert": if it is the case that we increase human flourishing by through taxation and welfare, then of course we should have such a policy -- who cares about whether anyone "deserves" anything in some metaphysical sense if we can produce better results? On the other hand, if it is the case that unemployment benefits after X number of months really does disincentivize working and reduce our collective well-being, for example, and we have the evidence to back such claims, then of course we should craft our policy to reflect this fact -- again, disregarding ideology in favor of objectivity.

Harris should be happy, because he is, I think, slowly winning a battle against popular conceptions of free will he began in The Moral Landscape. This isn't merely an academic question, although it can quickly become obscured by technical terms like hard and soft determinism and libertarianism, retributivism and consequentialism, and the hard and soft problems of consciousness. The fact is that how we perceive others' ability to choose affects our willingness to offer them favors or forgiveness, and influences the harshness of the punishment we think people who have committed crimes deserve. If we can further expose the falseness of free will, we can help people create systems of justice, governance, and even interpersonal relations that better promote our welfare, instead of wedding ourselves to outdated, religiously inspired, scientifically false ideas about sin, culpability, and immutable essences.

Harris doesn't present many new ideas here, and I found David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain to be more engaging and more thorough (even if I found Eagleman's work itself derivate and too light in some places), but I still recommend this as a nice starting point for anyone interested in the arguments against our intuitive sense of free will -- which may not be as intuitive as you think.

As Harris writes, "The illusion of free will is itself an illusion." The prose is terrible -- though it inspires me to invent my own quasi-self-referential sentences likes "The Book of Genesis is itself a book" and "This bowl of cereal is itself a bowl" -- but the point is dead on.

Here's a toast to Harris, and a hope that he'll stop writing these enlarged blog posts in favor of more good science and philosophy!(less)

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About Sam Harris

"Sam Harris (born 1967) is an American non-fiction writer and philosopher and neuroscientist. He is the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (2004), which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), a rejoinder to the criticism his first book attracted. His new book, The Moral Landscape, explores how science might determine human...more

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The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief

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