Free will. Who needs it? Not me. Not you. Not Sam Harris. Not anybody.
Which is a good thing. Because almost certainly free will doesn't exist. So it's good news, and unsurprising news, that something humans don't have isn't necessary to live a satisfying life.
Harris is an excellent writer and thinker. Read his "Life Without Free Will."
If you're under the illusion that you're free to do whatever you decide to do, his piece will reassure you that's it's fine to give up that unsubsantiated belief.
I particularly liked this section of the essay.
In my view, the reality of good and evil does not depend upon the existence of free will, because with or without free will, we can distinguish between suffering and happiness. With or without free will, a psychopath who enjoys killing children is different from a pediatric surgeon who enjoys saving them. Whatever the truth about free will, these distinctions are unmistakable and well worth caring about.
Might free will somehow be required for goodness to be manifest? How, for instance, does one become a pediatric surgeon? Well, you must first be born, with an intact nervous system, and then provided with a proper education. No freedom there, I’m afraid. You must also have the physical talent for the job and avoid smashing your hands at rugby. Needless to say, it won’t do to be someone who faints at the sight of blood. Chalk these achievements up to good luck as well.
At some point you must decide to become a surgeon—a result, presumably, of first wanting to become one. Will you be the conscious source of this wanting? Will you be responsible for its prevailing over all the other things you want but that are incompatible with a career in medicine? No. If you succeed at becoming a surgeon, you will simply find yourself standing one day, scalpel in hand, at the confluence of all the genetic and environmental causes that led you to develop along this line.
None of these events requires that you, the conscious subject, be the ultimate cause of your aspirations, abilities, and resulting behavior. And, needless to say, you can take no credit for the fact that you weren’t born a psychopath.
Of course, I’m not saying that you can become a surgeon by accident—you must do many things, deliberately and well, and in the appropriate sequence, year after year. Becoming a surgeon requires effort. But can you take credit for your disposition to make that effort? To turn the matter around, am I responsible for the fact that it has never once occurred to me that I might like to be a surgeon? Who gets the blame for my lack of inspiration?
And what if the desire to become a surgeon suddenly arises tomorrow and becomes so intense that I jettison my other professional goals and enroll in medical school? Would I—that is, the part of me that is actually experiencing my life—be the true cause of these developments? Every moment of conscious effort—every thought, intention, and decision—will have been caused by events of which I am not conscious. Where is the freedom in this?
Hard to argue with. But if you feel like disagreeing with Sam Harris because you believe in free will, go ahead. After all, you're powerless to do anything else.
Scientific experiments support the idea that our consciousness and free will are in fact an after effect of someone or something else making our decisions - our sub-conscious.
[6] Brain Story: The Final Mystery - Part. 4
Posted by: Janya Barrish | September 12, 2012 at 04:47 PM
Link to experiments that demonstrate we have no free will.
[6] Brain Story: The Final Mystery - Part. 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBYt41nhj1Q
Posted by: Janya Barrish | September 12, 2012 at 04:51 PM