It has been one of those odd times when I seem to be getting tripped over by the same sorts of ideas over and over again. I can't for the life of me tell you why I thought it was a good idea recently to read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams -like the proverbial mountain, it was just there. Then I was tossing up what to read next and there was this other book on the brain called Incognito and that was more or less on similar ground although, obviously quite updated. Both, though, stressed the fac...

"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...

This essay is a brief treatise on what author, Sam Harris, calls the “illusion of free will”. In his typical “Harris” fashion, he demonstrates that the popular conception of free will as that which allows us to “do what we want to do without any outer or inner compulsions” is in fact a confusion. We, humans, are no more than the product of our genes and our past life experiences - both of which we can’t exert much influence upon. In a more scientific term, it’s our “neurons” that determine our t...

I like padding my reading challenge with ridiculously short books.

This book is succinctly mind-blowing. After finishing reading (actually, listening to) it, I am solidly convinced that the conventional understanding of 'free will' is an illusion My only gripe regards his talk of moral responsibility: Harris raises some interesting questions (how can we hold criminals accountable if they are not in control of their actions?) but falls short of answering them to any satisfaction. I believe that this is due to the fact that such questions are unanswerable, I just...

So, Sam Harris an atheist and a neuroscientistHe 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

Harris is a smart guy, and an engaging writer. But he is just plain lost. He is not only lost in the sense of not having Jesus, but also lost in the sense that he cannot make his way out of the thicket of his own premises. He simply cannot see how what he is saying applies to what he is saying.

Lying / Free Will, Sam Harris Sam Harris says the idea of Free Will "cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality" and is incoherent. According to Harris, science "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet."People's thoughts and intentions, Harris says, "emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control." Every choice we make is made as a result of preceding causes. These choices we make are determined by those causes, and are therefore not really

Whoever said that there are no absolutes in philosophy must have surely had the topic of free will in mind. I've never heard more compelling arguments for such opposing points of view, each with its own existential hyperbole of quintessential conflubbery (yes, I just made up my own word, as a determinist I had no other choice).If you're committed to the mental calisthenics necessary to tackle the tentacled titan that is Free Will, you owe it to yourself to seek out Daniel Dennett's 'Elbow Room'

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

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 conclud...

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...

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

Kick ‘Em While They’re DownThis is a book of academic philosophy written in popular form. In it Harris is primarily concerned with defending his position about the illusory nature of the idea of Free Will, principally against the philosopher Daniel Dennett. However, there is an important cultural background to this debate which Harris has refrained from alluding to, I suppose in deference to professional discipline. This background is theological and subtly pervades the entire debate. The politi...

Sam Harris’s book is essay length, and a wonderfully easy read, considering it presents some revolutionary ideas. The overriding one being his questioning of free will.He tells us that various scientific experiments have shown beyond doubt that we reach decisions in our brains unconsciously - before we reach decisions consciously via the sense of “I think” that we know so well. These unconscious decisions are shaped by our genetics, our upbringing, our physiology, our culture, our current situat...

Although Sam Harris is a neuroscientist rather than a theologian, he prosecutes his case against free will in this book with religious zeal rather than scientific objectivity and rigor. He constantly and repeatedly makes uncorroborated blanket statements that the reader is evidently supposed to take on faith. The book reads like a lawyer's brief—and not a very good one at that (I speak as a retired litigation lawyer)—rather than a dispassionate scientific or philosophical inquiry.Harris, like ma...

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...

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...

So,–the concept of free will is "fundamentally incoherent"–rather, everything is entirely determined, except also random–this is supported by one particular result in cogsci–since there is no free will there are no doings, just happenings–if doings are incoherent and there are only happenings, then our penal institutions punish people not for what they do but what happens to them–so what we should DO is TAKE ACTION to reform our institutions accordingly–also I would like to thank my wife for all...

Free Will is a short but informative book (judging by its length calling it an essay would probably be more accurate) looking to prove that free will is an illusion, and I have to say, it managed to convince me. Despite the daunting subject, Haris' ideas are clear and easy to grasp which is something I really appreciate in non-fiction. So many authors get so tangled in their ideas that they forget that what they're writing isn't meant just for them. It was great, food for thought for a very long...