About Sam Harris

Sam Harris is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and podcast host. Harris’ first book, The End of Faith (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks. Harris has since written six additional books since September 2013. Harris currently hosts the Making Sense podcast. In September 2018, Harris released a meditation app called Waking Up with Sam Harris.

Introduction

Free Will challenges the view that we have control over our thoughts and actions. By considering neuroscientific evidence and everyday experiences, Harris argues we are controlled entirely by our biology and environment. The conclusion from these claims is not that we are doomed or lack any meaning in life. Harris believes this knowledge can only make the world a better place, especially through our criminal and political systems.

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The Unconscious Origins of the Will

“You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”

– Sam Harris

Your will relates to your ability to decide on and initiate action. Sam Harris argues that free will is an illusion, but you still can control your awareness. Harris offers an example where you have no conscious awareness. If your back is hurting right now, you will likely unconsciously move in your seat to remove your discomfort. This is an action that does not use your conscious awareness. That said, there are examples of actions that require conscious awareness. For example, planning a morning stretching routine to prevent this back pain in the future. With these actions, there is a conscious decision being made. You have become aware of your pain and then made a decision that requires consciousness. Despite this, awareness and the motivation to do something do not mean this action was supported by free will. Harris describes this example as conscious deliberation and explains that this does not mean you have free will.

You still lack free will during conscious decision-making because you didn’t decide to realize your pain. You also didn’t create the idea to develop your own stretching routine. This idea just came into your head. Because you have no control over your thoughts and ideas, your actions are predetermined by biological mechanisms. For you to actually have free will, you would have to:

• Be conscious of all the factors that help determine your thoughts and actions
• Have complete control over all these factors
  

Both of these characteristics are impossible. So, as Harris points out, you are not controlling the storm in your mind. You are the storm.

 Despite this, Harris believes your choices still matter. You may not know why you have a specific urge, but what does matter is the action that follows. Your actions still have an impact on the world. 

The Science that Debunks Free Will

Harris’ belief that we lack free will is based on the scientific findings of neuroscientists, like Benjamin Libet. Libet found in his experiments that it was possible to detect brain activity in the motor cortex, signaling them to move, 300 ms before they even made the decision. The participants felt they had decided to move. But, the reality is that their brain had already decided to move their body before they were even aware. So, Libet concluded that the only way we can fully control our decisions is to fully control our brain activity. Nobody is entirely in control of their brain activity. This means the feeling of control we have is simply an illusion. We are controlled by our biological processes and environment.

Harris also explains another neuroscientific study that has supported this claim. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants were asked to press one of two buttons. They did this while watching a clock composed of a random sequence of letters. The participants had to report the letter that was visible at the precise moment they decided to press a button. The results showed that the brain showed information about which button would be pressed about 7-10 seconds before the decision was consciously made. Again, this suggests your brain has already determined what you are going to do a few seconds before you think you are making a decision.

Can you decide what your next thought or intention will be? The answer will definitely be no. This fact alone can debunk the idea that we have free will.

Avoid Fatalism

“A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.”

– Sam Harris

A common emotion associated with learning you no longer have free will is what Harris calls ‘fatalism.’ It is a resignation that everything is down to fate. So, life has no meaning. Harris offers a scientific study to support this claim. Students who had recently read an argument against the existence of free will were more likely to cheat on the exam that followed. Another study found that people who had read similar arguments were less helpful and more aggressive.

Harris advises you to avoid the fatalism of seeing others as nothing but an unconscious collection of atoms. Although this might be factual, it is better for you and your happiness to consider what is in your control and under your influence. Harris believes that accepting his lack of free will has improved his ethics, compassion and forgiveness. He holds less grudges and forgives himself more readily. Both of these things allow him to grow and improve.

Another example of fatalism is believing that you might as well just sit back and do nothing if you don’t have free will. Harris points out that doing so will only have wider negative consequences. He also argues that sitting still and doing nothing is much harder than you might think. Your impulses depend on prior causes. Harris uses the example of this book. The thought sprung into his mind to write a book on free will. He did not choose to have this thought but he became aware of this thought and made the conscious decision to write it. This does not mean he showed free will but he still created something productive. He is not in control of his mind because he is only part of his mind. You can do what you decide to do. But, you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

Moral Responsibility

“The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad environments, and bad ideas (and the innocent, of course, have supremely bad luck). Which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for? No human being is responsible for his genes or his upbringing, yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character. Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself.”

– Sam Harris

Impact on Crime

Harris argues that potentially the most important outcomes of this book are social and political. If free will is debunked, we must reconsider the way we deal with crimes. Currently, crime is met with punishment on moral grounds. We generally punish people for committing crimes because we consider their decisions immoral. Harris believes crime should be viewed differently but should still be dealt with. Some people will have biological mechanisms that mean they are more likely to commit crimes. So, it makes sense to incarcerate these people so they are not a threat to other people. That said, Harris recommends we separate the criminal from criminality. He encourages readers to consider a person who has committed no crimes their whole life. But, they grow a brain tumor late in their life and subsequently murder somebody. In this instance, we are more likely to blame the brain tumor than the individual. In contrast, the individual who has committed crimes their whole life has no more free will than this individual who has grown a brain tumor. This is why Harris believes there should be a chance in the prison system. Although we should still incarcerate people who commit crimes, prisons should focus on deterrence and rehabilitation rather than punishment. 

To put these ideas into practice, Harris provides the example of Steven Hayes and Joshua Kamisarjevsky. These two career criminals broke into Dr William Petit’s family home in 2007. Upon entering, they found William sleeping on the sofa. Joshua proceeded to hit Dr William Petit over the head with a baseball bat. The doctor responded by screaming and Joshua responded by bludgeoning William over and over until he was no longer conscious. The criminals then moved upstairs where they found William’s wife and two children (aged 17 and 11). They tied the two children to the bed and Hayes forced William’s wife to come in the car with him and withdraw $15,000 in cash. Upon returning, he decided to take William’s wife into the living room and rape her before strangling her to death. The criminals then noticed that William had escaped. The criminals then frantically made the decision to cover the house in gasoline and set it alight with the two children still tied to the bed upstairs. Later, the investigators would ask the criminals why they didn’t untie the two girls before starting the fire. Joshua’s response was that it simply didn’t cross his mind. Harris brings up this example because our natural response is that these criminals knew exactly what they were doing and deserve to be punished. That said, this is without knowing that Joshua had been raped throughout his childhood and was shocked by his own behavior on that day. Steven has also shown remorse since and tried to commit suicide due to his shame. Conscious awareness was involved in planning to rob the house. But, the criminals claim they had not planned any of the rest of their crimes. These men do not know why they are the way they are. Similarly, we do not know why we are the way we are. So, Harris suggests that as we cannot take credit for not having the brain of a psychopath we should also try to understand why these people committed these crimes.

Impact on Politics

Liberals tend to hold the belief that people are either lucky or unlucky in life. On the flip side, Harris notes that conservatism in the United States is associated with personal responsibility. This is based on Christianity’s belief in individualism. Those who are conservative assume that people have full control over their actions, choosing their own future. They do not consider chance and people’s environments. Conservatives neglect that even self-made millionaires had particular experiences and privileges that helped them. None of us have chosen our genome, place of birth or upbringings. These are factors that determine success and we have no control over them.

If politicians were willing to accept that no one has free will, there would be a significant change in policies. They would need to put more effort into helping society to improve people’s wellbeing.

 

Final Summary

Free Will argues that the control we feel we have over our actions is an illusion. We are puppets that are controlled by our biology and environment. That said, Harris does not present this as a negative thing. Instead, we no longer have to view our fears and neuroses as personal. We can become better at forgiving ourselves and others. Finally, we can create a better world that can help those who have a biology that has predisposed them to crime. 

Without free will, we can have a world where we encourage those who can change to make those changes. We can also find alternative solutions for those who cannot change.

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