I was given one as a gift many years ago, and after playing around with it a little, I put it aside in preference to the good old paper and glue. In that short experimental period, I downloaded a total of six books onto the damn thing (including, obviously, Free Will). Stumbling across the e-reader in a drawer not too long ago, I decided to slowly work the books it contained back onto my reading list.
One thing I did like about the e-reader experience was the ability to take notes on the machine itself. Traditionally, I dogear pages and scribble notes in margins, and, regretfully, often have a hard time deciphering my own chicken scratch when reviewing and trying to compose a post. No such problems with the e-reader. Write as much as you want, and everything is kept in Helvetica clarity.
As a text, Free Will is a short one. Amazon says the paperback is 96 pages, but of course that kind of detail is lost in the e-reader format. I think its length is a double-edged sword in many ways. It seems Harris’s intent was to write something short and to-the-point, given that the subject he has chosen has consumed thousands upon thousands of other pages in the scientific and philosophical literature. That’s good, in my opinion. Boil the argument down to its essential components, Sam, and don’t get distracted by the moral implications of your conclusion.
The problem, perhaps not surprisingly, is that Harris DOES get distracted by the moral implications of his conclusion, with more than half of his short book concerned with the appearance of what he is ultimately saying. And, in my experience, the downfall of following that path is always complicated by a failure of language.
Here’s the essential point. “We” don’t exist -- at least not the free entity that everyone typically thinks themselves to be. “We” are what our brains do, both consciously and unconsciously, and once we accept that premise, the concept of a free entity controlling or directing the activity of our brains collapses under its own weight. Harris puts it very well when referring to the flurry of activity going on in your brain and “your” relationship to it.
You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.
Exactly. “We” are what our brains do. Any other phraseology, any other use of “we,” “I,” or “you,” secretly smuggles the concept of free will into the discussion. For example, let’s ask one of Harris’s distracting questions:
If there is no free will, how can “I” be held responsible for “my” actions?
The only honest answer to this question is to say that it is nonsensical and ask for it to be rephrased. If there is no free will, then there is no “I”, at least not in the sense that the questioner is likely using that word. “You” are responsible, but “you” means something different from what you think it does.
Ultimately, I think, we need to define and use different terms to make this distinction clear. One sloppy way to make the point is to ban the use of pronouns altogether. In doing so, the contradictory nature of the above question becomes clear.
If there is no free will, how can “the agent with free will” be held responsible for the actions of that agent?
See what I mean?
What Harris does well in Free Will is stake out the essential claim: that “you” are not an agent with free will, but that “you” are the conscious witness of “your” thoughts and actions. What he doesn’t do well is define a terminology that preserves this essential claim through his ensuing arguments over morality.
Anything that our brains do or decide, whether consciously or not, is something that “we” have done or decided.
No, Sam. “We” didn’t decide. “We” are the decision.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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