PDF Summary:Free Will, by Sam Harris

Do we have free will to make our own choices and decide our own actions? To many of us, it certainly feels like we do. But philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris thinks that we aren’t really in charge of our decisions—and in Free Will, he makes the case that not only is free will an illusion, it’s an illusion that we’re better off abandoning altogether.

Harris argues that all of our thoughts, feelings, desires, and decisions are caused by influences that are outside of our control and, often, even our consciousness. So, he asks, how could our decisions possibly be free? Yet Harris also makes the case that though our choices are predetermined, the effort we put into making decisions and acting according to them still matters. In this guide, we’ll examine Harris’s ideas and put them into the context of what other philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychologists have discovered about the origins of our thoughts and decisions.

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Harris writes that the unconscious processes that occur in your brain and determine your thoughts are influenced by things that happened prior to the present moment, outside of your control and consciousness. (For example, when you’re shopping for groceries, you might think that you’re choosing a cereal freely and deliberately. But factors like the ads you’ve seen, the cereals you ate as a child, the taste preferences you inherited from your parents, articles you’ve read about nutrition, the colors of the boxes, and so on direct what your brain is doing as it makes the decision.) Harris contends that a system where your thoughts and actions are determined outside of your consciousness and control is not compatible with free will.

Are “Prior Causes” the Whole Story?

While Harris considers the influence of past events—what he calls “prior causes”—a nail in the coffin for free will, not every expert agrees with that interpretation. John Horgan (who argues in The End of War that we have free will) agrees with Harris that your choices are constrained by factors like your genetics, childhood, education, and environment. But Horgan writes that the fact that our choices are constrained doesn’t mean that our choices are non-existent, as Harris argues. (In other words, acknowledging that we don’t have absolute freedom doesn’t require us to then assume that we have no freedom at all.)

Horgan contends that the role of prior causes isn’t as simple as Harris makes it sound. He points out that the physical processes that Harris considers the definitive cause of our thoughts and decisions give rise to phenomena—like the mind or consciousness—that can’t be satisfactorily explained solely in terms of physical processes. Horgan isn’t convinced by Harris’s position that effectively assumes that because science hasn’t figured out the complexities of free will, then free will must be illusory.

Similarly, philosopher Eddy Nahmias—in a piece disagreeing with the ideas of Harris, psychologist Daniel Wegner, and neuroscientist Patrick Haggard, who all consider free will an illusion—points out that science figures out unexplained phenomena piece by piece, without jumping to the conclusion that those pieces won’t be revealed to combine into a whole. Nahmias contends that there’s no reason to define free will, as Harris does, in a way that cuts off progress toward explaining consciousness and thinking. Nahmias’s hope is that scientists will discover how free will works—but, he says, that will never happen if they dismiss the idea altogether.

Our Choices Are Determined by the Laws of Nature, Including Chance

A second insight that reveals the illusory nature of free will is the idea that our thoughts and intentions occur as a result of the laws of nature, including chance. Harris explains that the brain is a physical system that is subject to laws of nature. The brain reacts to physical stimuli and processes—including things that happen by chance within our own bodies, like the random firing of synapses—and then it produces impulses that we interpret as our own desires and decisions.

For example, if you’re walking in the park and feel hungry, you might make what feels like a conscious choice to buy an ice cream cone. But Harris would argue this is just the result of physical processes: Your brain determines that you feel hungry, interprets sensory information like the sight of the ice cream truck, accesses memories, releases chemicals in response to the anticipation of eating an ice cream cone, and weighs factors like your budget and diet.

(Shortform note: A controversial explanation for the idea that our thoughts and intentions are produced by physical events is a theory called epiphenomenalism. It proposes that our conscious experiences and thoughts are “epiphenomena,” or byproducts of physical events in the brain, and they can’t cause or influence our actions or decisions. This has consequences for the idea of free will: Since mental events have no causal power, in this view, our actions are entirely caused by physical events that themselves aren’t affected by our thoughts or decisions. Philosopher Jonny Thomson characterizes this as a particularly distressing point of view because it implies that our thoughts and feelings serve no purpose.)

Why Do We Believe in Free Will?

If free will is an illusion, as Harris contends, then why are we so convinced that it’s real? According to Harris, we believe in the illusion of free will because we’ve accepted two myths about our thinking and decision-making processes. Next, we’ll examine each of these ideas and why we believe them, even if they’re wrong.

Myth 1: We Could Have Chosen to Behave Differently in the Past

First, Harris writes that we think we have free will because we look at a choice we made in the past and think we could have made a different decision in the same situation. This feels like proof of free will, but Harris argues that it’s illusory proof.

Harris argues that, given that our thoughts and actions are determined by prior causes, there’s no conceivable way that we could have chosen to behave differently in a given situation. If we were to replay the situation over and over again, and the circumstances stay consistent and the external factors influencing us stay the same, then our decision will always be the same.

Free Will and the Ability to Do Otherwise

The question of whether we could have chosen to behave differently in a given situation involves what philosophers call the “ability to do otherwise,” which many experts consider necessary for moral responsibility. Compatibilists and incompatibilists view this differently: Incompatibilists—like Harris—argue that we couldn’t have done otherwise if our actions are caused. Conversely, compatibilists contend that an external cause for our actions doesn’t rule out an ability to do otherwise if, by acting otherwise, we’d act according to our motivations.

The question of whether we could do otherwise plays out hypothetically in the 1993 film Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray plays Phil, a weatherman who keeps reliving the same day. Philosopher Lawrence Crocker writes that at first, determinism seems to order Phil’s world: Each day plays out the same as the last, as if everyone’s actions are fully determined by external causes. Yet Phil begins to make different decisions—to act differently—based on what he’s learned. Crocker writes that for the most part, this is consistent with determinism because Phil starts each day with a different mind (with memories of the days prior). But it might also illustrate compatibilism since his ability to do otherwise implies that he has free will.

Myth 2: We Consciously Drive Our Thoughts and Actions in the Present

Second, Harris writes that we justify our belief in free will by believing that our thoughts and actions originate with us. He explains that we can disprove the idea that we’re the source of our thoughts by noticing that we have no control over the thoughts we think. To do this, Harris recommends observing how your thoughts and intentions arise: You’ll notice that you don’t decide what thoughts to think, just as you don’t decide what you prefer when choosing between vanilla and chocolate. Harris writes that our thoughts and preferences don’t originate with our conscious selves but instead just occur to our conscious selves. You can do what you want to do—but you can’t decide what you want.

(Shortform note: Many experts say that observing your thoughts can help you see that you don’t control them. In Mindfulness in Plain English, Bhante Gunaratana writes that the goal of meditation is an awareness of your thoughts, which you’ll see pass automatically through your mind. And in Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn explains that thinking involves actively engaging with your thoughts, while mindfulness is stepping back from your thoughts to observe them. Some experts think that in addition to improving our awareness, mindfulness can enhance our ability to act freely: Philosopher Terry Hyland writes that practicing mindfulness can help us achieve a control over our mental processes that is something like free will.)

Harris writes that another way to disprove the idea that we drive our own thoughts and actions is to look at empirical evidence. He explains that researchers have demonstrated that the brain processes information and makes choices before we’re aware of the decision—even though we feel like we’re consciously making the decision. For example, in laboratory experiments, researchers have detected brain activity that shows we intend to move 300 milliseconds before we have the thought that we intend to move. Similarly, neuroimaging techniques can be used to predict which button a research participant will choose to press as many as seven to 10 seconds before the person has consciously decided which button to press.

(Shortform note: Some experts say that all we can conclude from the experiments Harris cites is that observable physiological processes underpin our decisions. Philosopher Alfred Mele writes in Free Will and Luck that such research has other, more plausible interpretations than Harris’s: These studies look at “readiness potential,” brain activity that precedes voluntary movement. Mele argues that the presence of this activity doesn’t prove that a decision has been made subconsciously; it simply shows that a distinctive pattern of brain activity precedes a conscious decision. Alternatively, philosopher Adina Roskies explains that new computational models suggest that readiness potential might be an experimental “artifact or illusion,” not a real brain signal.)

Why Does It Matter Whether Free Will Is an Illusion?

Many questions about free will sound abstract until we start to think about their real-life implications. Harris argues that we’re better off knowing we don’t have free will than wrongly assuming we do. In this section, we’ll explore the practical benefits of accepting that free will is an illusion, examining Harris’s arguments that knowing we lack free will can help us treat ourselves and others more compassionately and ethically.

It Can Make Us Humbler and More Compassionate With Ourselves

The first benefit of recognizing free will as an illusion is that we gain a new freedom: freedom from a misplaced sense of credit or blame for our actions, according to Harris. He contends that once we know that external factors shape what we do, then we’ll feel more humble about our accomplishments and more compassionate about our failures. He also thinks that we’d benefit from realizing that much of our character comes down to luck: Different circumstances would have made us into a different sort of person.

(Shortform note: The idea that you’ve become who you are by chance might be uncomfortable, but many scientists think that luck plays a key role alongside genetics and environment in shaping you. Biologists theorize that in addition to nature and nurture, randomness—such as chance events during brain development—exerts a major influence on your personality and the interests you develop throughout your life. Some scientists even argue that chance may play a more important role than your environment in shaping who you are.)

Harris contends that even without free will, our efforts still matter. He differentiates between determinism, or the idea that our thoughts and actions have a cause, and fatalism—the idea that whatever will happen will happen, whether we take action or just watch things play out. Harris writes that sitting back and doing nothing isn’t the answer: He says that even though our decisions are caused, these decisions still matter, as does the effort we put into engaging in conscious thought and deliberation. This is because even though free will is an illusion, our choices and efforts still determine what kind of people we are and what kind of lives we live.

(Shortform note: Philosopher Eddy Nahmias agrees with Harris’s point that determinism doesn’t have to equal fatalism. Nahmias explains that people sometimes mistakenly take determinism to mean that our decisions are caused in ways that totally bypass our conscious deliberations and decision-making—a theory that (if proven true) might justify a sense of fatalism. But Nahmias notes that even if scientists find that determinism does accurately explain how the universe and our decisions work, that wouldn’t prove that our decisions bypass our conscious thinking and deliberation. He writes that the efforts we make to think and deliberate are meaningful and contribute to our decisions, whether it turns out that the world is determinist or indeterminist.)

Should We Act Like Free Will Is an Illusion?

Let’s say that you agree with Harris that free will is an illusion. You accept that you don’t technically deserve full blame for your mistakes or full credit for your accomplishments. What happens next? Should you begin to act according to your knowledge that free will isn’t real, as Harris suggests? While many experts believe on an intellectual level that we don’t have free will, not all of them agree with Harris that, on a practical level, we should behave as if our choices and actions aren’t free.

Oliver Sacks—a neurologist who spent decades researching the human brain—came to believe that while consciousness is real, free will is an illusion and just a feature of our consciousness. Yet Sacks also contended that we have to take responsibility for our decisions rather than blaming our mistakes on the neurophysiology of our brains.

Albert Einstein also rejected the idea that we have free will but believed it necessary for us to behave as though we have it. He explained that if we want to live in a world where people behave morally, we have to act as if we’re responsible for our decisions. Yet, citing his belief that everything is determined, Einstein didn’t take credit for his own achievements. He explained that his understanding that free will isn’t real prevented him from taking himself too seriously.

It Can Help Us Treat Other People More Ethically

A second benefit of accepting the illusory nature of free will is that we can change how we see other people’s moral choices. Harris argues that because prior causes—including those that happen by chance—influence each person’s choices, moral character, and ability to comply with moral norms, we can’t give them full credit or blame for what they do. He believes that we can treat others more ethically by realizing that people aren’t fully responsible for the crimes they commit. For example, he thinks it comes down to bad luck for someone to be a psychopath and argues that we should develop ways to rehabilitate, not blame, such people.

(Shortform note: Harris isn’t the first to question whether psychopaths are responsible for their actions. Another philosopher to consider the question is Walter Glannon, who writes that to have moral responsibility, you must be able to channel your desires, feelings, and intentions into moral decisions appropriate to the situation, a kind of control that many psychopaths don’t have. But he contends that if we understand moral responsibility in degrees, then some psychopaths have sufficient cognitive and emotional abilities to be held at least partially responsible for their actions. Like Harris, Glannon also thinks we should explore rehabilitating psychopaths—but we have to weigh people’s individual rights against the public interest in avoiding harm.)

In much the same way that Harris contends our choices still matter even though we can’t choose our choices, he argues that there are practical benefits to holding people responsible for their behavior even if they aren’t responsible in an absolute way. Our current criminal justice system assumes that we’re responsible for our actions and that criminals choose freely to break laws. So when we drop the idea of free will and realize that anyone committing a crime hasn’t caused their intentions or their actions, then we also have to change our idea of justice. Harris outlines three focuses that he thinks our criminal justice system should adopt to give fair treatment to people who commit crimes. We’ll look at these focuses next.

Focus 1: Assess Their Degree of Guilt

The first thing we should focus on when someone commits a crime, Harris argues, is assessing their degree of guilt. He contends that we can judge someone’s blameworthiness by whether they made a conscious, voluntary decision to harm someone else. This is useful not because they are responsible for that decision in any absolute way, but because a voluntary decision reflects the beliefs, prejudices, and desires characteristic of the kind of person they really are. So we could consider someone who’s clearly made a deliberate decision to harm someone else as more guilty than someone whose intention or moral competence is less clear.

(Shortform note: When Harris cites the degree to which a harmful decision is intentional as the key factor in determining how guilty we are, he’s tapping into a debate over what psychologists call “intent and impact.” Many people believe that the intent of an action is much more important than its practical impact. But psychologist Melanie Tannenbaum contends that intent and impact aren’t independent from one another: How we perceive someone else’s intent when they hurt us has a sizable effect on how we perceive the impact of their actions. This means that there’s not only a moral argument, like Harris’s, but also a cognitive argument for taking people’s intentions seriously—and considering how our decisions reflect who we are to other people.)

Focus 2: Acknowledge the Role of Luck

The second focus that Harris suggests for situations where someone has committed a crime is the idea that luck plays a significant role in our ability to behave morally. He writes that our genes, our upbringing, our environment, and the ideas that occur to us all determine our character. Chance plays a role in all of these influences. Harris advocates for creating a criminal justice system that acknowledges the role of luck in determining our moral character—and understands criminals as victims of their own biology and environment—so that we can become more compassionate in our treatment of people who break laws.

(Shortform note: Daniel Dennett objects to Harris’s use of luck to explain why some people behave in moral ways and others don’t. Dennett explains that even though we can’t take responsibility for being born into a family that teaches us how to determine what’s morally right, we do have the responsibility to practice what we’ve learned and to educate ourselves on the appropriate way to behave. So while luck plays a role in the resources we start with, it’s up to us to choose to behave as morally as we can given what we have.)

Focus 3: Determine How Much of a Risk They Pose to Others

A third and final focus for society’s treatment of people who commit a crime should be to determine how much of a risk they pose to others. Harris contends that our criminal justice system is driven by our desire for retribution—a drive that makes no sense if we don’t believe in free will. He writes that when choosing how to punish people, we should focus on the risks they pose to others. By curtailing our desire to punish people for the sake of punishment, we could place a stronger emphasis on the social usefulness of the punishment. We might continue to incarcerate people, but only if incarceration will prevent them from harming other people, help rehabilitate them after a crime, or meaningfully deter them from committing more crimes in the future.

Reimagining Our Idea of Justice

Many experts agree with Harris that our idea of free will is fundamentally wrapped up in how we understand justice. In Behave, neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky argues that if we give up the illusion of free will, then it becomes more natural to stop focusing on punishing people for committing crimes and instead focus on addressing whatever has caused them to behave in ways that put other people at risk. Similarly, psychologist Oliver Genschow explains that our beliefs about free will help us to justify our current criminal justice system, which relies on the idea of retributive justice (people deserve to be punished) rather than the idea of rehabilitative justice (people should be rehabilitated so they can re-enter society).

This system didn’t always look as it does today: Experts say that until the 1970s, rehabilitation was a key part of US prisons. But since then, policy has shifted to make punishment the primary function. In addition to bringing about a proliferation of prisons and a disproportionate incarceration of minorities, this ideological shift has also produced what experts call the prison industrial complex, an entire economic sector that profits from providing services to the correctional system and therefore has a financial stake in the continuation of mass incarceration. This has led to the creation of a criminal justice system that is not effective at what it purports to do: deterring people from breaking the law and making communities safer.

Philosopher Angela Davis explains that when we take prisons for granted and imagine people who are incarcerated as deserving punishment, we ignore the harms of mass incarceration and systemic racism. Davis advises that we must shift from punitive to restorative justice, which involves healing the relationship between a person and their community. She also recommends addressing the social and economic conditions that lead to crime, which might help us acknowledge that while it’s productive for people to take responsibility for their actions, their decisions are actually affected by many forces in their lives and communities.

How Can We Maintain a Sense of Self Without Free Will?

Even though Harris argues that we don’t have free will, he doesn’t believe that accepting free will as an illusion—which requires a major shift in perspective for many of us—has to undermine everything we believe about ourselves and others. In this section, we’ll explore three ways Harris says we can maintain a strong sense of self and agency even in the absence of free will.

Recognize That You Can Still Think Deliberately

First, Harris recommends recognizing the crucial role that deliberate thought plays in your life. He explains that while it’s true that you don’t cause your thoughts or choices, it’s also true that you have to think and deliberate to make certain kinds of decisions or plans. (Some choices, like picking a bagel or oatmeal for breakfast, can happen almost automatically. But that’s not true for complex decisions like choosing which neighborhood to live in.) Harris writes that you can choose to think deliberately or to focus your attention on a specific question or decision. Even if you don’t have ultimate control over the thoughts that you think, he recommends recognizing that you still do need to think and deliberate.

(Shortform note: Other experts agree with Harris’s idea that we need to use our capacity for conscious deliberation when we have important decisions or plans to make. But how exactly can we enhance our ability to do this deliberate kind of thinking? Neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff recommends a few strategies for becoming a more effective thinker: analyzing your own cognitive process, becoming aware of your cognitive biases, consciously avoiding logical fallacies and shortcuts, considering the second-order consequences of your decisions, studying and designing mental models, and building emotional resilience so you can keep your feelings from affecting your judgment.)

Become More Aware of the Causes of Your Feelings and Actions

Second, Harris recommends gaining more control over your life by tuning in—and responding—to the external influences that affect how you feel and act. He explains that while it’s impossible to recognize all of these outside factors, you can identify and respond to some of them. For example, you might notice that you find it difficult to focus when you work from home and attribute your lack of productivity to a shortfall of skill or motivation. But if you take a closer look and realize that your desk is cluttered, the room is poorly lit, and the sound of construction next door is distracting, then you can take steps to change your environment. Those changes can improve your concentration and therefore your behavior.

(Shortform note: Becoming aware of the many influences that shape your thoughts and decisions is easier said than done. But in The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy offers some practical advice for understanding and addressing these external forces. Hardy identifies three types of influences: the messages that your brain processes, the people you associate with, and your environment. He recommends paying attention to the media and ideas you consume, being intentional about the people you spend your time with, and clearing up physical and psychic clutter so that you can live in a more positive environment.)

Realize That Your Choices Still Matter

Third, Harris advises acknowledging that even if you don’t make your choices freely, those choices are still important. Even though each decision you make is determined by outside causes and events, your choices still matter. He explains that we still have control over doing what we decide to do (even though we aren’t in control of the decision we made in the first place). In other words, once you’ve made a decision based on your intentions, you’re in control of acting according to that decision. For example, if you've decided to eat a healthy dinner, you can control your actions by selecting and consuming nutritious food.

(Shortform note: Some experts consider Harris’s views on self-control contradictory. Philosopher Richard Carrier notes that when Harris contends that we can gain more control over our decision-making, he contradicts his argument that we don’t have free will. Carrier argues that this signals that Harris’s definition of free will might be too narrow. The disagreement illustrates just how difficult free will is to define and study. Physicist Marcelo Gleiser notes that each time we choose how to define or analyze free will, we take the risk of reducing the nuances of our decision-making too far. Gleiser contends that in reality, the question of whether we have free will probably can’t be answered “yes” or “no”: Being human is more complicated than that.)