In a recent comment, a reader named K asked me to respond to this article: “Why You Probably Don’t Have Free Will,” by Jack Maden. Here is the article’s opening synopsis: “Neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris argues that free will is an illusion. In his view, we are the mere conscious witnesses of decisions that deep in our brains have already been made.”
In particular, K wanted a response to this statement by Sam Harris, as quoted in the article:
These findings are difficult to reconcile with the sense that we are the conscious authors of our actions. One fact now seems indisputable: some moments before you are aware of what you will do next—a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please—your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this ‘decision’ and believe that you are in the process of making it.
Here is my brief response to this statement, edited from a reply to K that I posted here:
The basic error in this quote is the idea that we make decisions with our “brain,” meaning our thinking mind. The reality is that we make decisions in our “heart,” meaning our love/emotional self, and then our thinking mind confirms and supports the decision we have already made in our heart. That’s what’s really going on in the phenomenon that Sam Harris is describing.
However, Western intellectuals such as Harris generally can’t see or understand this because they are trained to think that human intellect is primary, when in reality love and emotion is primary, and intellect is secondary, following what love tells it to think and do. Their fundamental misunderstanding of how the human psyche works leads them into all sorts of errors, including the denial of human free will.
Ordinary people who make decisions every day understand human reality better that these so-called “rational” intellectuals.
The rest of this article is an edited and expanded version of a longer follow-up comment that I posted here, after reading the article itself.
For more on Sam Harris and free will, please click here to read on.
In the previous post, I responded to the question “
The article “
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