Free Will
Ratings80
Average rating3.7
I was first introduced to the concept of the absence of free will by Daniel Kahneman's book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”. I was astonished by how much bigger the so-called optical illusions were than I had previously thought, and how they could affect things like the correlation between the right and left brain through the corpus callosum, the willingness to walk slowly after reading about an elderly person, or the tendency to be more selfish after reading the word “money”. All of these things made me realize that thinking is not a magical thing, but a totally physical thing that is influenced by preceding events. So, when I was introduced to Bayes' Theorem, I fully grasped the logic of natural things. Furthermore, I read other books that talked about free will, including “Homo Deus” by Harari, “The Errors of Descartes” by Antonio Damasio, and “Por que não somos racionais?” (Why are we not rational?) by Ramon Consenza (only available in Portuguese).
Free will is more objective and philosophical than the others, but less applicable. Harris could focus more on knowable neurological conditions (such as Phineas Gage) to show people that often we don't have control over our actions. Additionally, we could focus on the maxim of Christopher Hitchens, “I don't have a body, I am a body,” to show readers that we cannot be separated as entities from our physical bodies. However, it is still a good book, and I recommend it to those who are new to the topic. If you're not convinced, try reading the other books I mentioned. I know you can't control what you want, can you?
The discussion on criminal justice was interesting, but other than that, I don't think I gained any new insights from this book.
2 stars because it's a topic dear to my heart, but there's nothing here that wouldn't fit in an regular magazine article, not even a “long read”. Basically it's stating the problem in a few ways with no real resolution.
This is before I realized Sam Harris is a pseudo-intellectual hack. Though, in hindsight, this book is probably the least bad one of his that I read since it's the most related to his field of research. It's also really short. Do Recommend
I listened to the audiobook version of this twice today and I think I'm going to buy the Kindle version so that I can highlight passages and make notes. Also, I think I need to go through and read this more carefully in order to better contemplate Harris's argument.
His objection to the claim of free will seems to be the combination of several premises:
1) We live in a causal universe.
2) Our bodies including our neural processes are all subject to causality as well.
3) It's not possible to consciously know and control all the biological factors that go into our decisions.
Therefore, what we subjectively experience as “free will” or acts of choice actually arise deterministically and are beyond our actual control.
I won't get into all the arguments and counter-arguments here. I also think it's important to remember that the burden of proof is actually on those who claim that free will exists. I don't like Harris's choice of definition of what free will is and what the requirements are, but I assume he came upon those honestly when he chose to present this counter-argument to the claim. I do wish, though, he had given more lengthy treatment to the compatibalist arguments on the topic.
This is an interesting read and there are a number of challenging and thought-provoking ideas in this book. Also, it's a very short read.
Surprisingly easy and fun to read. Harris makes an convincing argument for determinism while taking into account opposing views in what seems to be a fair and comprehensive way.
