This comment section is so dumb they don't even understand what he is trying to explain with causality yet they say free will must exist "because I feel like it should"

I'm going to exercise my free will and not listen to any more of your swill. Bye

Okay, so he admits to know next to nothing about consciousness and in the next sentence says with realtive certainty that free will is incoherent? To me, that seems more inconsistent than most common beliefs in free will...

He points well to his argument. He talks about the common idea of free will that is contradictory. We think that the will to decide cant be determined by rules, but also cant be random. So it leaves little option as we think determinism or random is all there is. Determinism doesnt mean its predictable, it means it follow rules, and with very little rules you can make an unpredictable deterministic sistem. If you add random to the sistem then it could even look more rich.

I know my reasoning isn't science but it goes like this. 1. You are you. I am me. She is her. He is he. We each have our own distinct agency of choice within our own physically closed system. (Bodies/brains). This closed system is influenced however from outside stimuli. 2. Each of our closed physical systems makes it's own decisions. I would call this closed system decision making "will". It is closed (one body/brain) and therefore independent of another person's closed system (even if it can be externally influenced, but that is a slightly different side street). 3. This closed system of choice (will) is "free" because it is not bound (connected) physically to another closed system controlling it. 4. Human free will doesn't necessarily mean that each individual closed physical system making decisions isn't making actual decisions. It is. 5. We each have to define what "free" means in "free will". What people like Sam Harris and (some) people who argue with Sam Harris don't know they are debating is an oxymoron. A contradiction in their mental image of "free" in "free will". 6. Free will can't mean free from the individual system making decisions. Even if we exchange "closed physical system" for ideas of "spirit" or "soul", this concept is the same and still works the same. 7. To say that for free will or agency to exist it has to be free from the self it emanates from whether physical or spiritual, is absurd. It can't be "will" if it doesn't take place in the individual physical body/brain or soul. It can't be "free" if the definition of free means the choice comes from anywhere but within the individual physically or spiritually. 8. What Sam Harris is saying is that choice is illusionary because our closed systems (bodies/brains) couldn't have, currently can't and in the future won't, ever make a choice any different than what each one will choose. The choices may be different than past choices, but each choice made on their own could not have been any different. 9. I think Sam is correct in this idea. But again, it is absurd to say that the choices we make aren't choices just because either our closed physical systems made them or even if our soul/spirit made them. The individual (whether physical or spiritual) still makes these decisions and it is theirs to make. 10. We also have to define what we call a decision or a choice. If a brain or a soul has two different potential actions it can have it's body carry out, and that brain or soul has it's body do one action versus another action, that was a choice made. The choice isn't free of the brain or soul. The choice IS the brain or soul carried out by an action by the body. Where else should a choice come from? How else can a choice be defined? 11. The absurdity of Sam Harris' view on free will, comes down to him trying to force HIS definition of what a choice is, which cannot exist anywhere in reality whether physical or spiritual. I think there are certain concepts in the existence of everything, everywhere, for all time that cannot be changed. This is one of them. Edit: 12. Also people who argue against Sam that say free will is free outside of the brain or soul, are also incorrect. The only other factor might be if you are talking about deity or higher spiritual being altering someone's choice but that is a different discussion.

What's incoherent and doesn't make any sense is his explanation

Just because you speak with certainty, doesn't make it so. Sam, it is you that makes no sense.

The problem is that if you considers free will and Newtonian clockwork determinism the only two options, then free will is actually a better rough cut first approximation. The debate is mired in a shockingly mass swamp of naivité. As more sophisticated models of complex systems that contain and consult models of their environment are developed, we'll have issues worth debating.

No one should talk about free will until they can explain consciousness scientifically.

gotta say, i'm liking this comment section

When people wave physics around as if we have a comprehensive understanding of the quantum domain and all its behaviour in order to prematurely close the question of the nature of consciousness, then we are into religious thinking territory.

Yes, it is hard to make sense (coherence) of free will assuming that we understand all the laws of the Universe. However free will is self evident to most people, so why dont we instead think that there might be parts of the Universe that we don't understand?

Let me summarize Sam's argument about free will:

Human beings with free will...the only creature that gets to violate the laws of physics.

If free will is an illusion how do you know that?

Dismissing free will without pointing to agency building tools is reckless. For me, free will means being able to steer one’s wants over long term, with the crowbar of discipline. It’s an actual change despite thermodynamics and path of least resistance. And there is also a lot to be said about inner alchemy, being on top of mental wellbeing.

I’m quite sure if the premise that evil is evident in the world because of free will, this wouldn’t be a conversation. This is the most transparent of motivations yet because of it’s absurdity.

I know why he needs to believe this. But this is just as much a claim as its opposite. We don't know this. And even if free will really didn't exist, it would be a completely irrelevant piece of information that wouldn't, and couldn't change anything. It's just something Harris tells himself to feel better about himself. And ironically, it is essentially a religious belief more than anything else.

When you make a choice you have determined it. The experiments regarding free will is /was not a description of free will as per the original experimenter . If anything he said we at least have free won’t. The issue with testing these things at a single layer is that the distinction is between when things are automatically processed or not automatically processed. My gut has a “brain”- more neurons committed to the digestive process than the “thinking “ “awareness “ process. I , my head brain is unconscious to the functions of my gut brain. However it is not unaware of the process. The awareness of the gut-brain-CNS is called the autonomic system for a reason. Pain , hunger… etc are the signals to my conscious self that make my conscious “aware” of a situation in my body. Otherwise the “body” operates at a level of awareness that is not a “conscious “ level. Consider that these levels go down to the cellular and then molecular levels. The cells would be aware but not conscious of interacting mechanisms of molecular interactions.

bingo!

Sam Harris denies that free will exists and says that it’s an illusion. However, that means that he’s also claiming that whenever we do not feel free then that’s also an illusion. After all, if there’s no freedom then the notion that we are unfree must be just as illusory as the notion that we are free since you can’t feel unfree unless you’re comparing it with the state of being free. So, Harris has to explain not only why freedom is an illusion but why we can turn this illusion on and off, i.e. why is it that we only feel free sometimes (when we imagine that we ourselves are choosing what we do, although, of course, it’s Harris’s thesis that we are never in fact choosing anything and what we think we “chose” was inevitable all along), and at other times we feel unfree (when we imagine that we are being prevented from doing what we would otherwise choose to do). If X doesn’t exist, not-X can’t exist either. If freedom does not exist, not-freedom cannot exist. The dialectic opposes a real antithesis to a real thesis. It doesn’t create antitheses to theses that don’t exist. Sam Harris claims that even though freedom does not exist, the illusion of freedom can exist. How? If freedom does not exist, on what is the illusion of freedom based? When people in a desert see mirages and hallucinate that there’s an oasis just ahead, they at least know that oases are real things, hence there really could be an oasis just ahead. How could you hallucinate freedom if there’s nothing in the world to which it corresponds? Just to contemplate freedom means that freedom exists since you could not contemplate such a concept if it were absent from the world.

Free will would defy the la of conservation of energy, becase to divert matter or energy from it's inertial path you would need to create energy out of nowhere. Basically, there are not causes that aren't caused. It's crazy to think that some atheist can believe in free will.

"Sure"

He is just courageously expresing what he sees as a paradox. No need to attack him. Just enlighten him if you have better insights.

How is free will an illusion and determinism not an illusion? What if it's the opposite? What if the term "free will" needs to be reframed, precisely defined, and properly questioned? Same goes for determinism. I'm pretty sure both are concepts.

Alright, then I wont blame you for your justifications of massacres against palestineans then

Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul, and He/She will free you of any time card.

So free will is just a sentence that doesnt have to mean something, as " this sentence is a lie" doesnt have to mean nothing. On the other side if we think that the free will is not some part of us but the sum of qhatever parts we have then there is an obvious thruth, the we is the whole composition and if we lose parts or add parts we change the we. Obvious there can be more relevant parts. And then we can say as and obvious thing that the acts of any whole we considere its will. Fair enough good for a rock good for a human. Then the free part if what reacts is a whole then is free to react, because there is nothing more that reacts. On the other side someone can argue taht freedom can only be about inner states because any external state at wich we react as influenced us to react si it has afected the will. But all of this is just playing with words. There is no answer, if there is not a question, but it can get you some insights to try to create concepts and questions from some characters or sounds.

Always love hearing from Samth Greenis.

This is coherently incoherent.

He relies on studies that show neuronal activity given a task, prior to awareness of the task. These explanations have already been shown deficient and selective/doesn't always happen. So, not sure where all this certainty comes from. We just don't know.

Another part of the free will is the will part. Who is this par that has a will, commonoy we talk about we, and we dont mean our lega or arma or senses or parts of rhe body, some people looks at the brain, although most will accept that if we take some little part we are still us, or if we are drugged or dreaming there is still the we. Less people will think that on anestesia there is a we, and then there is the full near death experiences. But we can go on that rabit hole to find were is the we taking things from our body to finally find a minimum purest we. What is curios is that anything that can be remembered as senses or experiences makes for a we as there is suposetly a subject, but thats just a practical term, and it looks like if there is a story there is a we.

This guy only got famous for stealing the Tooth Faerie from the ones who believed in it. Otherwise, pretty empty-headed.

Determinism is bullshit. Give it up. You've presented no evidence even remotely compelling enough to consider in any serious measure. And what's even worse.. if you are correct, literally nothing changes. We still have to eat, sleep, and go to the potty to take care of business. Determinism is just another branch fallacy of "fine tuning" of the universe. You seek God. If the universe is completely set and known throughout all time, how is that any different than invoking a monotheistic all-powerful deity? Going sarcastically here with Einstein's equivalency principle.. if it has no difference and does the same thing.. they are the same thing.

Sam Harris is starting to look like a homeless guy...and 'yes there is Free Will. We can choose and make epigenetic modifications of gene expression through conscious acts physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually to move us toward the person we want and the life we seek to live. People like Sam Harris, Atheistic, Darwinians who think everything is "run" by out genetic code can't understand that...its sad

Sam is such a creep. Dude has no business on here i advise you to look into his comments. He is not of good character.

😂🤣

That's the frown of a man who's suffering from contradicting himself. ;-)

but you however have free will to spew out lies!

What a shit smear of a man

i too am a free will denier

Semantics. Sam Harris isn't nearly as intelligent as he believes.

I don‘t understand why out of all humanity, this guy keep being interviewed while not having anything to say

"No one can explain consciousness, and that's the explanation, so no free will. Obvious, right? And that's also why we should wear masks and fear Trump and anyone who doesn't bash him."

‘There is no free will’…says the guy who chose not to shave and put on a shirt for his interview…🤷‍♂️

Sam is not relevant. I ignore.

There's no free will and everything is explained through randomness thrown in.

What a putz. If you believe people don't have free will, start treating them like they don't. Whenever Sam is confronted with his own bias that clearly blinds him to his own insufficiency, he fights back hard. However, according to his own logic that is all there is to people. Talk about incoherent. The only thing here that's incoherent is Sam's presuppositions.

He’s a gatekeeper and wants your freedom taken away

“ Samuel”