For Sylvia Jane

To contact us Click HERE

On April  10, while Iwas working my way through a multi-post exegesis of philosopher Robert Kane’sbook, TheSignificance of Free Will, reader Sylvia Jane asked why I hadn’t commented onSam Harris’ more recent book on the subject.

I had to admit that I hadn’t even known of its existenceuntil three days before receiving her question.  

But I’ll return to the subject now, just to say that I don’tthink Harris brings anything new or interesting to the table.

Harris makes two points: (1) free will is an illusion, and(2) that is a good thing, too: we’ll all be better off when we rid ourselves ofit.

As to (1), Harris relies upon Libet’s experiments. So let’stalk about them. Benjamin Libet is a physiologist who, in the 1980s, ran experimentsin which he instructed his human subjects to make a certain simple movement ,like pressing one or another button. He had their brains wired up for hismachines while they were deliberating and when they finally did press one or theother button. His conclusion was that therewas information available from their brain hemispheres that disclosed whichbutton they were going to push several seconds before they pushed either ofthem.

This certainly sounds dramatic. I have the introspective awarenessthat I am deciding now to dosomething as a result of my conscious thought processes, but my hemispheres hadgone into the appropriate mode for that decision seconds before?  Free will wrong! Determinism right!  Right? So Harris would have us think.  Iteven inspired him to start putting quotation marks around the word “decision.” “Youthen become conscious of this ‘decision’ and believe that you are in theprocess of making it.”

My problem with this is that I don’t believe we can inferthat all decisions are alike, or that all intentional acts are inherentlyconscious.  Consider the last time youwere out driving. You likely did a lot of things without ever having theconscious experience of doing or willing to do them. Consider hitting the leverthat puts the left signal turn on. This is an action of which you may neverhave had any conscious awareness at all, yet we might fairly still speak of itas a conscious intention. I doubt it really matters in which second before youhit the level a machine would show the relevant hemispheric activity.

But now consider the sort of life-changing experience Kaneis talking about. Suppose you have sworn off cigarettes. Yet you’ve just had abig meal of a sort that has often in the past been a prelude to cigarettes. Youreach for a pack for a moment – then remember your vow and, we will say, pullyour hand back. Do Libet’s experiments give us any reason to believe that wasset before you were struggling over it? No. The rare and critical decisionsthat count always seem to happen when one is not hooked up to a physiologists’machine, and there is no obvious non-question-begging case for generalization.   

Harris’ second point is somewhat more interesting. Maybefree will is a bad idea (even if it does accurately describe some events in ourlives) and we’re better off without it. This is related (as Harris tells us) to the Buddhist notion that the self is a bad idea.  

I’ll come back to that next week.