(By Sam Harris)

I've been reading excerpts, and it got me thinking...

(Sam Harris is one of the "Four Horsemen" of Secular Humanism, along with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and the recently late Christopher Hitchens. I also honorarily include the late Carl Sagan as the fifth because his last book "Demon Haunted World" was along the same lines. Harris is a neurophysiologist).

The book is arguing that we do not actually have free will in the popular sense, but that we are, inevitably, products of the minute state of the universe at the moment.
He states the obvious that all agree on, that as soon as the present slips into the past, it is unchangeable. We are then left with a necessarily unchangeable present, and the only thing we can anticipate, obviously, is the future.

But no two people's past, present, and future are alike...at all. There's no way to say that one person's choice is not what another person would have done if everything was identical...EVERYTHING.

This suggests an interesting hypothetical scenario...a situation in which people are in the exact same state as each other, down to the the last particle in the universe, and are left with NO difference whatsoever...except what they're about to do next...

...Will it be different?

I think Harris argues that it cannot be different. As long as they are all exactly the same they will proceed the same. There is no rationale to expect a difference, no "free will" independent of the minute state of the universe.

But Mormonism says otherwise...

The BoM talks about, in relation to who acquires the high priesthood in this life, that in some beginning state they were all equal. They differentiated themselves by their choices from there.
But wait. How could they have started out the same but ended up different if they all had the exact same input? Or, what prompted to first one to make a bad choice unlike the others? Where did this evil come from? If it originated within the wrongdoer, they all had it or none of them had it. If it originated from elsewhere, it must have influenced all of them the same...so we are left with an unanswered question...What made the difference?
If it was random, that's not fair.
If it was "take a guess", that's not fair.

I used to treasure a belief in the preexistence, but from racism to who "finds" the gospel in this life, who has addictions, who has talents, whatever, it is a loophole for all kinds of excuses, prejudice, and self-importance, flattery, and a cop-out for a bunch of things...same as the afterlife is.

In the first place, according to the CURRENT understanding of the Universe the exact same conditions do NOT always produce the exact same results. There is an element of total randomness thrown in. This is what Einstein didn't like about Quantum Theory.

Let me go back to discussion I had with my TBM father when I was 16. The whole idea of "free agency" and being rewarded or punished based on what your behavior merited struck me as flawed in terms of justice.

Suppose two "intelligences" in the early pre-existence. One chooses to do A and another chooses to do B. Now why did they choose differently?

As far as I can see there are three possibilities:

(1) Either they were pushed in different directions by different environments (which is not their doing) or

(2) Their internal makeup (their "character") was different (but they did not create their original character from nothing-that also is not their doing).

(3) Or it is just pure randomness--an uncaused event (which, again, they had no hand in causing since it's uncaused).

Now in none of these cases can I see it to be JUST to reward or punish based on their behavior OTHER THAN to shape future behavior--to have the existence of the reward or punishment part of the environment to influence their behavior.

My Dad said he could not understand what I was saying. I explained it again as clearly as I could. He again said he could make no sense of my argument. My convert (and less TBM) mom who was listening said that she could understand it.

Later when I recounted this to a friend he, grinning, said, "your Dad understood, he just said he didn't so he wouldn't have to face having his nice, orderly Mormon worldview challenged."


This was all from thinking about Mormon religious stuff but it also applies to the concept of free will in general. How can a will be free? Either it is the result of one of the three above things. I can fathom no other. If anyone can I'd love to hear it.

Note, I am talking here about "free will" in terms of an entities ability to choose freely only from itself. I'm not talking about the existence or absence of external coercion as in a totalitarian state where jackbooted agents force the person. That kind of "freedom" is different from free will.

As, I believe, Schopenhauer said, "we are free to do as we will, but we are not free to will as we will." That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't see a way out for "free will."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2012 09:11PM by baura.

"We must believe in Free Will...we have no choice"

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears or kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill!"

- Neil Peart (RUSH), Freewill

Free will can be overwhelmed by, hormones, brain chemistry, illness of all kinds, money, others having control over you.
There are many who have no say about their own free will.