Free Will [Deckle Edge]

Don't be fooled by the length of this book, it packs a riveting punch. Think about everything you know about yourself: the choices you've made in life, your feelings and notions, even your mood, and then throw it all away. Sam Harris' bold monograph facilitates this very notion with cogent language, opening your eyes to the nebulas realm of unconsciousness, decision-making, efforts, and intentions. This review is meant to evaluate Free Will and convince you that this book is worthwhile to read. That is, if you are ready to hear what Dr. Harris has to say.Probably the most impressive aspect of this book is its ability to capture the difficult concept of free will, and articulate it with such finesse that the mundane individual can grasp its meaning. In fact, Free Will's main objective is to destroy this idea of autonomy that has been ingrained in basic human culture. The question of free will "touches nearly everything we care about". The subject of this book is so relevant that according to the author, "if the scientific community were to declare free will an illusion, it would precipitate a culture war far more belligerent than the one that has been waged on the subject of evolution".Free Will's concise structure makes this book encouraging to read, despite its controversial material. With a degree in philosophy from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience, Dr. Harris is well equipped to enlighten us on such a challenging topic. The book is divided into eight thought out chapters that does a good job of first establishing the relevancy of its subject and then systematically breaking down the "illusion" of free will by attacking it from various angles. Here I have a brief description and opinion on some of the important parts of the book:IntroductionFree Will's introduction is unsurprisingly brave and captivating. He acknowledges that the claims he makes will undoubtedly receive criticism, and that most people will "find his conclusions abhorrent". So, in order to allure his skeptical audience on such a contentious topic, Dr. Harris uses an equally controversial example on how free will is just an illusion: the Cheshire murders of the Petit family. If you are an individual with a weak stomach, vivid imagination, and sensitive heart, I advise you skip over this part of the book. He is defending the criminals involved in Cheshire murders who were also convicted of rape and abuse. He strives to reduce these acts of blatant horror and moral disregard to products of uncontrollable experience combined with plain neurological mechanisms. Essentially, Dr. Harris says that the murder and rape of Dr. William Petit's wife and two young daughters was not their fault. If this is not enough to catch your attention, I would question your sense of basic human empathy.Ch. 1-The Unconscious Origins of the WillFree will is an illusion. This idea is repeated to the reader consistently throughout the book and is the central point that the author strives to drive home. How Dr. Harris relays this idea and tries to disabuse us of a concept that has been so instilled in our mentality is remarkable. Using examples relatable in everyday situations, he intelligibly picks apart our idea that we actually have a freedom of choice. He says, "Our sense of free will results from a failure to understand this: We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises". Where does this intention originate? Dr. Harris claims it comes from our unconsciousness and bolsters his claim with some solid experimental evidence. He boldly states that scientists can have the ability to know what you're about to do seconds before you actually do it. Basically, scientists can read your mind. Read to find out the revealing nature of this evidence.Ch. 2-Changing the SubjectIn this chapter, Dr. Harris switches gears and gives respect to the cohorts out there dedicated to this debate of free will. He mentions the three major philosophical approaches to this issue: determinism, libertarianism, and compatibilism. I appreciate this chapter because for a moment, Dr. Harris separates himself from his personal opinion on the matter, and gives respect to the contending opinions as well. Though later on in his essay, Dr. Harris debunks these philosophies, he gives the reader an opportunity to understand the different opinions on the matter and form his own stance with object descriptions for each branch.Ch. 3-Cause and EffectThis is perhaps the most scientific portion of the book. "In physical terms, we know that every human action can be reduced to a series of impersonal events: Genes are transcribed, neurotransmitters bind to their receptors, muscle fibers contract, and John Doe pulls the trigger on his gun." What does Dr. Harris describe here exactly? Did he just attribute a seemingly immoral act to plain products of physical mechanisms? Does he believe that the injustice in John Doe's acts lies not in his punitive outcome from the legal system but actually in the nature of the legal system itself? Does Mr. Doe deserve a punishment, or does Dr. Harris infer that if anyone (or anything) were to blame, it would be the simple, impersonal neurological mechanisms in the brain that were not in John's control? Read to find out how the author intriguingly develops his argument.Ch. 5-Might the Truth Be Bad for Us?My favorite part of the book involves the author defending how destroying our current idea of free will will not negatively affect the way humans progress through life. In a sense, this is also the most important aspect of the book, for if free will were a necessary illusion, our revilement to it will direct us towards a wrongful path. "Many people worry that free will is a necessary illusion-and that without it we will fail to live creative and fulfilling lives...One study found that having subjects read an argument against free will made them more likely to cheat on a subsequent exam. Another found such subjects to be less helpful and more aggressive." It is apparent that a world without free will is like a guilt-free pass into wrongful doings, but Dr. Harris maintains his stance that our exposure to the "truth" will not be harmful. "It is surely conceivable that knowing certain truths about he human mind could have unfortunate psychological and/or cultural consequences. However, I am not worried about degrading the morality of my readers by publishing this book." Actually, he boasts that losing the sense of free will has only boosted his ethics and increased his feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and diminished his sense of entitlement to "the fruits of [his] own good luck." How does this make sense? Read the books to learn his clear and logical thought process.The rest of the book is dedicated to our moral responsibility given this convincing argument Dr. Harris lays out on the table, touching on politics, law, religion, public policy, and much more. If you have a few hours to spend, and are feeling intellectually adventurous, I recommend this book. I cannot think of another book so concise, yet so powerful. Beware that the topic discussed in this book is not one for light reading, but one for thought provoking. Read it with an open mind and you will absorb a unique perspective on human nature articulated nicely by a bright scientist well suited for such a topic.

The book’s conclusion is that we do not have free will. In the chapter “Cause and effect” on pages 27 to 30, Sam Harris dismisses the ideas of Martin Heisenberg who argues that we do have free will. I think that both Harris and Heisenberg are correct. I think that the apparent conflict is simply that they have different definitions of free will. For Harris, free will means that a choice between two or more actions should be made consciously. Harris argues that we do not make choices consciously because they have already been made by unconscious mechanisms. I think that Heisenberg would argue that even if the choice is not conscious, we have freely made the choice by unconscious mechanisms. Heisenberg argues that free will is the result of chance events in the brain such as the random release of “vesicles” which transmit signals from one nerve cell to the next in the chain. Harris is critical of this idea, saying “How could the indeterminacy of the initiating event count as the exercise of my free will?”. Below, I will try to present 3 scenarios which I think illustrate how the alternative views of Harris and Heisenberg are compatible, and seem consistent with other views in the book such as the discussion by Tom Clark on Pages 20 to 22.Scenario 1. I am walking towards a new destination. When I turn a corner, I see that the entrance to the building is hidden directly behind a tree. I need to decide whether to go to the left or right of it but there is no apparent reason to prefer either course. I choose to go to the left, but when I arrive at the entrance, I feel I could have consciously chosen to go to the right. Harris would argue that I would be wrong, the decision had been made unconsciously before I thought I made it consciously. It also seems probable that the decision depended on the random state of my brain just before I felt I made the decision, perhaps even before I turned the corner. But my feeling that I could have chosen to go right was probably correct in another sense – if I had arrived a minute later, my brain would have been in a randomly different state and I might have chosen right rather than left.Scenario 2. A robot is to be used to check a room or building, of unknown size and shape, for the presence of dangerous radioactive or toxic substances. The robot is placed inside an outside door, which is then closed to prevent the robot escaping to the outside by mistake. Imagine that the program controlling the motion of the robot is deterministic – for example when it strikes a wall or object, it will be reflected in the same way as a rolling ball. In that case, there is a danger that the robot will become stuck in an “infinite loop” if it comes back to the starting point and points in the starting direction. As a simple example, it may head straight for the opposite wall, bounce straight back to the door, and bounce back to its original position, thus repeating this back and forth motion indefinitely (more complicated infinite loops are also possible). A simple solution to this problem is to add a random number generator to the robot’s program so that, for example, when the robot bounces off a wall the return direction is randomized. This will prevent the infinite loop problem and illustrates a simple application of a random choice generator. There are other more sophisticated ways of completely searching a room or building but using a random number generator provides the simplest solution.Scenario 3. I have moved to a new city and ask my new neighbor where she prefers to shop. She notes that there is a choice of 2 supermarkets, X and Y, but they are in opposite directions so people shop at one or the other. She definitely prefers X. Her judgment seems sound to me, so for several weeks I shop at X. X seems OK to me, but one morning I have the urge to try Y for no apparent reason (perhaps because the random noise in my brain has caused me to favor Y that day). The probable result will be that my neighbor’s opinion will be confirmed and my decision might be seen as a waste of effort. However, there is a small chance, say 10%, that I will be surprised and prefer Y. In that case, I will probably decide to shop at Y all or most of the time. So although the chance of preferring Y was small, the possible gain from finding Y was better can be greater than the probable loss due to finding that X was indeed the better choice, as expected. This illustrates how Heisenberg’s random choice mechanism can be helpful in practice.In summary, the process of choosing between two (or more) alternative actions may be considered in terms of adding a “signal” and “noise”. The signal is the evidence for preference for one alternative compared with another. In Scenario 1, going left and right were equally preferable so the signal was zero; thus the response would be determined entirely by the noise, with equal probability of left and right. In Scenario 3, the evidence was that supermarket X was better than Y, but the evidence was not so strong that noise from random variations in the brain could not exceed this moderate signal, so Y could be chosen occasionally. As argued above, occasionally choosing the seemingly less preferable alternative can be a sensible choice.This is an interesting book on an important topic. For those reasons it might deserve 5 stars, but I give it 4 stars because I don’t think it does justice to alternative ideas such as Heisenberg’s.