Philosophy
The religious instinct is not merely limited to belief in God and supernatural agents. And to varying degrees, even hard-core atheists tend to be religious in this sense, since they still adopt beliefs that may be religious in origin. It's a little too convenient that when one denies the existence of God, most other beliefs are not similarly rejected, but why should this be the case?
If we reject God, we can't simply assume the reality of the continued identity of the self (or even its very existence), an objective basis for morality, a rational basis for science, the existence of free will, the reality of the external world, the very idea of objective truth, etc. We need to mount arguments and evidence in support of these ideas if we want to be able to have a right to such beliefs.
And Sam Harris thinks we're lying to ourselves if we believe that our wills are free. His arguments are not particularly interesting or new here (and to many not even convincing). Harris may have just written a concise little book on the subject, but he's no Nietzsche, who clinched the case against free will and the self even more concisely, in less than a paragraph:
While I agree with a good number of points made by Harris, there is at least one fundamental point on which he seems to be utterly confused: his denial of free will cannot be a scientific conclusion when he argues that there is no possible world in which free will could, even in principle, exist. If this is not a testable claim that could be decided by empirical evidence but simply by conceptual analysis (as I would be perfectly happy to do), then this is a philosophical conclusion... and people say philosophy doesn't make progress :)
- Religious Belief And Scientific Worldviews
A couple from Hanno today. First he asks, "Do you think that religious belief is incompatible with a scientific world view, as the fundamentalists believe? Or do you think that these are different realms of truth, like Francis Bacon believed? Or do you...
- René Descartes
(1596-1650) ?If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties,? says Francis Bacon and thus begins Modern Philosophy. Given the background of centuries of dogmatic...
- Atheism Is A Religion Like Abstinence Is A Sex Position
When it comes to debates between religious folks and non-believers, it's not uncommon to hear the former claim that atheism is itself a religion ultimately based on faith. And it's not just your ordinary bible-thumping redneck either. If you've...
- Lecture 7 - Free Will, Determinism, Choice And Moral Responsibility
Ordinarily, we tend to think of our actions as freely chosen: we believe in free will. But if we get philosophical for a second, we have to start asking obvious questions, like what does that mean? What does it mean for something to be a choice? What...
- Sam Harris - Science Can Answer Moral Questions
Because of our long history of conquest, imperialism and xenophobia, we in the West have learned the hard way (though only as perpetrators) that we can't simply assume, and consequently impose, our beliefs and values on societies whose worldview differ...
Philosophy
Sam Harris on Free Will
If we reject God, we can't simply assume the reality of the continued identity of the self (or even its very existence), an objective basis for morality, a rational basis for science, the existence of free will, the reality of the external world, the very idea of objective truth, etc. We need to mount arguments and evidence in support of these ideas if we want to be able to have a right to such beliefs.
And Sam Harris thinks we're lying to ourselves if we believe that our wills are free. His arguments are not particularly interesting or new here (and to many not even convincing). Harris may have just written a concise little book on the subject, but he's no Nietzsche, who clinched the case against free will and the self even more concisely, in less than a paragraph:
A thought comes when ?it? wishes, and not when ?I? wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say the subject ?I? is the condition of the predicate ?think?. It thinks: but that this ?it? is precisely the famous old ?ego? is, to put it mildly, only a superstition, an assertion, and assuredly not an ?immediate certainty?. . . . Even the ?it? contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the grammatical habit: ?thinking is an activity; every activity requires an agent; consequently ??.But where Harris is interesting (and I've subscribed to this line of thinking for at least a decade now) is in what he has to say about the implications of the denial of free will: it doesn't de-humanize us. This recognition humanizes us because it helps us to understand that instead of jumping to conclusions and throwing blame around, as we're wont to do, maybe we need to be more compassionate and understand that people are not fully free, and that their actions are at least partly to blame on circumstances and other causal antecedents...
While I agree with a good number of points made by Harris, there is at least one fundamental point on which he seems to be utterly confused: his denial of free will cannot be a scientific conclusion when he argues that there is no possible world in which free will could, even in principle, exist. If this is not a testable claim that could be decided by empirical evidence but simply by conceptual analysis (as I would be perfectly happy to do), then this is a philosophical conclusion... and people say philosophy doesn't make progress :)
- Religious Belief And Scientific Worldviews
A couple from Hanno today. First he asks, "Do you think that religious belief is incompatible with a scientific world view, as the fundamentalists believe? Or do you think that these are different realms of truth, like Francis Bacon believed? Or do you...
- René Descartes
(1596-1650) ?If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties,? says Francis Bacon and thus begins Modern Philosophy. Given the background of centuries of dogmatic...
- Atheism Is A Religion Like Abstinence Is A Sex Position
When it comes to debates between religious folks and non-believers, it's not uncommon to hear the former claim that atheism is itself a religion ultimately based on faith. And it's not just your ordinary bible-thumping redneck either. If you've...
- Lecture 7 - Free Will, Determinism, Choice And Moral Responsibility
Ordinarily, we tend to think of our actions as freely chosen: we believe in free will. But if we get philosophical for a second, we have to start asking obvious questions, like what does that mean? What does it mean for something to be a choice? What...
- Sam Harris - Science Can Answer Moral Questions
Because of our long history of conquest, imperialism and xenophobia, we in the West have learned the hard way (though only as perpetrators) that we can't simply assume, and consequently impose, our beliefs and values on societies whose worldview differ...