Free Will
Sam Harris
Language: English
Pages: 96
ISBN: 1451683405
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A BELIEF IN FREE WILL touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.
In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edition)
The Akashic Experience: Science and the Cosmic Memory Field
The Disaster Profiteers: How Natural Disasters Make the Rich Richer and the Poor Even Poorer
Physics of Tsunamis (2nd Edition)
thoughts are depressing and disempowering; others inspire us. We can pursue any line of thought we want—but our choice is the product of prior events that we did not bring into being. Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn’t choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is
going on here? Of course, I could tell a story about why I’m doing what I’m doing—which would amount to my telling you why I think such training is a good idea, why I enjoy it, etc.—but the actual explanation for my behavior is hidden from me. And it is perfectly obvious that I, as the conscious witness of my experience, am not the deep cause of it. After reading the previous paragraph, some of you will think, “That Miller book sounds interesting!” and you will buy it. Some will think no such
whatever it is you do, and it is meaningless to assert that you could have done otherwise. Might the Truth Be Bad for Us? Many people worry that free will is a necessary illusion—and that without it we will fail to live creative and fulfilling lives. This concern isn’t entirely unjustified. One study found that having subjects read an argument against the existence of free will made them more likely to cheat on a subsequent exam.19 Another found such subjects to be less helpful and more
other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.3 More recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons was sufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a person’s decision to move 700 milliseconds before he became aware of it.4 These findings are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of
portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. First Free Press trade paperback edition March 2012 FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
