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Sam Harris on Daniel Dennett’s compatibilism – Free Will

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Saif Al Basri

“A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings”

― Sam Harris, Free Will

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24 thoughts on “Sam Harris on Daniel Dennett’s compatibilism – Free Will”

  3. I'm almost convinced that a society in which people are told they have no responsibility for their actions would be worse than a society in which they are. As far as I can see that's a coherent interpretation of "determinism".

  4. The puppet master is the sub-conscious mind as I understand it. I've just read Sam Harris' "Free Will"; I'm trying to wrap my mind around the arguments for and against free will. Harris argues that every thought I have is the result of physical events; even my response to that information is a product of the microstructure of my brain. So it would follow that degrees of freedom exhibited by different agents would be explained by the vast differences in neurophysiology inherent in human beings.

  5. It's not "a puppet is free as long as he loves his strings." What does loving or hating the mechanisms have to do with it?

    You're either a morally responsible agent or you're not. It doesn't matter if you like it.

  6. I think he meant that compatibilists redefine free will to a puppet like state; we experience free will, that our actions are results of our motives, but we acknowledges(love) the real deterministic nature(strings) of free will. And we are content with that.
    But dont trust me, or sammy, check out danny's own vids imo

  10. ستنتهي الأزمة السورية إن شاء الله وسينتصر الإيمان المعتدل على مستغلي الإيمان وعلى مستغلي الأزمة السورية
    هناك من يستغل الدين من أجل السيطرة التي يتوهم الوصول إليها وهناك من يستغل هذا الوضع المتطرف المستغل للدين من أجل نشر الإلحاد
    ولكن انتصار الإيمان المعتدل وانتهاء الأزمة السورية سينتصر على الاثنين معا إن شاء الله

  11. Can someone tell me why I'm wrong and there's no free will?

    Having consciousness allows us to be aware of thought before acting on them. This allows us to choose our actions when given a choice. But what causes us to make that decision is the illusion of free will according to Sam. Wouldn't how we come to our decision be based upon knowledge, wisdom, life experience… Thus allowing us to have an influence on the decision making process.

    O is everything we've done and came to be is what is the illusion as we have never had to control?

  13.   One could say that everything is actually based on free will, because no one can be sure of the end results.  Anomalies do happen,..and if even one anomaly occurs, the Universe does rest upon it.

  14. Regarding desires: a) It's not entirely true that they aren't "created" by us: they can be out of the formation of conscious habits. b) The phenomenology of choice is not reducible to an overwhelming desire that overcomes you. A desire can be overridden consciously.

    Regarding the subconscious, same. The subconscious, like the desire, can override consciousness, but that is not what the phenomenology of every choice amounts to: it can but it also might not.

    Another F for reductionism.

  15. I'm glad Harris shows respect to Dennett's position and describes it credibly. The puppet analogy is misleading though, and Dennett rarely get's the time to emphasize this point: being a puppet is undesirable because it means that there is another AGENT pulling the strings, and we don't want to be subject to the desires of another AGENT. If my desires are the product of mere CIRCUMSTANCE, then so be it. As long as my decisions are the product of my considerations (be they those of a deterministic computing system), I'm okay with it. There can only be ONE outcome of my decisions—even in a non-deterministic universe—and I WANT it to be the product of my considerations (and maybe the considerations of the agents I trust). That's the only option that even makes sense.

  18. compatibilism does not defend free will, it defends a type of determinism that compatibilists define as free will.
    they seem to be admitting that the "common sense" definition of free will is patently false. then, instead of admitting that free will does not exist, they then assert, since they are already committed to the idea that free will exists, that therefore free will must mean something OTHER THAN what almost every person on earth means when they say free will.
    compatibilism shows that determinism is compaible with SOMETHING, but that something is not free will. free will to my mind, and i believe to most people, is counterfactual realism, the ability to heve done otherwise in identical circumstances. the falsity of this proposition under determinism is contained in the very definition.

  19. Can anyone suggest some authoritative literature on both compatibilism and incompatibilism? I'd like to read up.

  20. He nailed it. Especially that end bit about the idea of being the "actor" being an illusion. He's referring to the notion of self, ego, or if you are religious, a soul; the idea there's a fixed "you" in the mind. This is an incorrect perception to adhere to as one's being, for there is no scientific basis to justify this feeling of being an ego, a thinker to thoughts in awareness. and in fact such identifications to keep that illusion going begin to make the world dualistic, which it is not. There is no "I" of the mind that has to deal with the ignorant "me" as a husk, and we all find ourselves contemplating and reminding ourselves things all of the time. If you are the awareness which knows information, just who are you telling and reminding in your awareness? You create a weird kind of loop, which feeds back into the dualistic notion that your self is somehow divided and isolated from what goes on inside your organism. This is where traditional free will is found, that you, as an agent, can transcend influence, experience, and conditioning, yet all you ever are as an organism is merely the collective production of such things. You are not a surfer on top of a wave, for you are the wave arising in the ocean of this cosmos. The former view is literally how we define ourselves, and it's factually wrong.

    How the illusion of self can be explained many ways – incorrect thoughts and beliefs that drive false behavior stemmed from beliefs is one way, another may be it being evolutionary baggage – but from an accountable view of science, there is no separate you in your mind cut off from your body, and to a greater extent of realization, your organism is not separated by environment, by other people, and by the universe, This helps one to realize one is only a relative amalgamation, a cultivation of processes, with no "outsider" or "controller" in any capacity, be it God or a self. Of course, for many of us, this requires experience to get, not information. This is also one of the reasons the scientific community has begun to support contemplative efforts like meditation, for there is some real truth to be exported from those practices that correlates to science. The biggest one being is that your innate awareness or conscious is selfless. This doesn't mean it's inherently altruistic, but it's literally without a separate self in its identification: that's only a thought that arises in awareness.

    If you identify yourself as the contents that come and go and not the space in which they appear and vanish, this will lead to suffering and an incorrect view of yourself, to others, and ultimately the universe. Almost all people on this earth are trapped there, and this will be the next frontier for human inquiry to pillage through.

  21. Compatibilism makes sense ~ Puppets don't evolve, but their marionettes learn with practice how to better guide them. Most if not all of what exists evolves… So does our ability to react different in situations, given the various stimuli we've learned to contend with.

  23. I think that guy didn't read Dan's Freedom Evolves, he made so many mistakes regarding that topic and about compatibilists.

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