In Free Will, Sam Harris states that neuroscientific findings give us clear reason to believe that we do not have free will. This counts not only for important decisions we must
make but also smaller ones, such as choosing between tea and coffee in the morning. (Harris argues that we have “the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions” and “some moments before you are aware of what you will do next is a time in which you subjectively
appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please. But “fee will is an illusion.”. Harris seems to find the thought rather distressing at first “because it touches nearly everything we care about. Morality, law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships,
feelings of guilt and personal accomplishment—most of what is distinctly human about our lives seems to depend upon our viewing one another as autonomous persons, capable of free choice.”. Later the tone of concern vanishes, and Harris explains how losing the sense of
free will may increase one’s sense of compassion and forgiveness toward others.
In United States v Grayson, the Supreme Court in the USA has called free will a ‘universal and persistent’ foundation for our system of law, distinct from “a deterministic view of human conduct that is inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system”. This conception of free will rests on two false assumptions: that humans are free to think and act
differently from the way they did in the past; and that we are the conscious source of our thoughts and actions in the present. Our sense of deciding what to do in each moment seems to be the actual origin of our subsequent behaviour. Offenders against the law, in Harris’ view, are “poorly calibrated clockwork” who do not deserve blame or punishment)“ Those of us who work hard and follow the rules do not ‘deserve’ our success in any deep sense.”. Harris despises compatibilism. It is “not the free will that most people feel they have”, and the vast amount of literature produced in its defence “resembles theology.”
The compatibilist Daniel Dennett has answered this critique with several essays that were subsequently published by Harris on the Making Sense podcast website under the titles: Reflections on Free Will, Stop Telling People That They Don’t Have Free Will, and The Nefarious Surgeon, which was first published on the website The Big Think.
Harris states that “the idea of free will emerges from a felt experience. “I just drank a glass of water and feel absolutely at peace with the decision to do so. I was thirsty, and drinking water is fully congruent with my vision of who I want to be when in need of a drink. Where is freedom in this? It may be true that if I had wanted to do otherwise, I would have, but I am nevertheless compelled to do what I effectively want. Choices, efforts, intentions, and
reasoning influence our behaviour—they are themselves part of a chain of causes that precede conscious awareness and over which we exert no conscious control. There is a
regress here that always ends in darkness.”
With a discussion of desert, praise and blame, at the end of Free Will, Harris goes back to where he began: “those of us who work hard and follow the rules [do] not ‘deserve’ our success in any deep sense It is not an accident that most people find these conclusions
abhorrent.”
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