Sam Harris Is Right About Free Will (And It Doesn't Matter)

I read Sam Harris's short book on free will a few years ago, expecting to disagree with it. I'd always had a vague sense that free will was obviously real, I make choices, I deliberate, I sometimes do things I later regret, which implies I could have done otherwise. Harris's argument is that all of this is compatible with the absence of free will, and that the feeling of choosing is not the same thing as actually being the originating cause of your choices.

The argument goes like this: your thoughts, decisions, and actions are the product of prior causes, your genes, your upbringing, your brain state at any given moment, the neural events firing in patterns you didn't choose and can't fully observe. You didn't choose to be the kind of person who deliberates carefully or acts impulsively. You didn't choose your values, your temperament, your capacity for self-control. These were given to you by causes that precede you. Where, in this chain, is the 'you' that is freely choosing?

The standard objection is that even if our choices are caused, they're still our choices, caused by our desires, our reasoning, our character. This is compatibilism, and it's the dominant position in academic philosophy. Harris's response is that compatibilism changes the subject. It redefines 'free will' to mean something weaker than what people actually believe, that they could have done otherwise, given exactly the same prior causes. That stronger claim, Harris argues, is simply false.

I think he's basically right about the metaphysics, for what its worth. The feeling of authorship over our choices is real, but it's a feeling generated by the same causal machinery that produces the choices themselves. There's no homunculus sitting behind the eyes, freely deciding. There's just the brain, doing what brains do.

Here's where I part ways with some of the more dramatic conclusions people draw from this. The absence of libertarian free will doesn't mean deliberation is pointless, or that praise and blame are irrational, or that we should stop holding people responsible for their actions. Deliberation is a causal process, it actually changes what you do. Praise and blame are inputs that shape future behavior. Responsibility is a social practice that produces real effects. None of this requires that you were the uncaused cause of your actions.

What it does change, I think, is the emotional register. If someone wrongs you, the case for retributive anger, the sense that they deserve to suffer because they freely chose to harm you, gets weaker. They were, in some deep sense, the product of causes they didn't choose. This doesn't mean there are no consequences. It means the consequences should be about the future, not about cosmic payback.

I find this view more humane than the alternative, not less. It's easier to be compassionate toward people, including yourself, when you understand that character is largely given, not chosen. That's not an excuse for anything. It's just a more accurate picture of what people are.