Free Will

I recently read a book by Sam Harris called Free Will. The idea that the book aims to convey is that free will as we like to think of it is an illusion. Which has obvious and deep ramifications on a whole array of issues such as religion or morality or politics.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a form of pre-determinism. The world isn’t pre-determined, just look at the weather system. The idea is my decision making is deterministic in nature. That given enough information you could predict every decision I made. The science here gets somewhat contentious. Though I feel the morality of the situation doesn’t. As mentioned before the weather is an example of a system that is chaotic. At a neural level this idea of randomness may also hold. Certain synapses will simply be active due to random chance.

So my decisions fall into two categories. Those that are deterministic and out of my control; and those that are the result of random chance and also out of my control. Morally speaking the result is the same either way. It is unjustifiable to hold me personally responsible for my decisions, my actions. My conscious is just as much an observer of my decision making as you are.

Given this idea certain values and assumptions we hold dear are now unconscionable. When a person murders someone else they didn’t really have a choice not to. We like to think they did, we like to think that they could simply have made a different decision. This can lead to a justice system that aims to punish people for their actions, after all it’s their actions, they’re responsible.

But as we can see, they’re not really responsible. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t incarcerate people. Clearly some individuals are more likely, more pre-disposed, to violent crimes. Thus to protect the greater society we should remove these individuals, but we should have empathy for these people that commit crimes. Empathy for how terribly unlucky they’ve been.

At the end of the day that’s the main driving force behind how people behave, luck.