Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett are determinists who agree that our thoughts and acts are completely determined by prior states of the universe and the laws of nature. But Harris is a hard determinist who thinks free will is simply an illusion while Dennett is a compatibilist who thinks we do have free will even though we are determined. In a review of Harris’ Free Will, Dennett says the book is veritable museum of mistakes. Harris replies with a lament that Dennett’s review is “a strange document—avuncular in places, but more generally sneering” and is itself a collection of distortions and mistakes. The review and reply are both lengthy, but a fairly quick look will give the student an idea of the differences between hard determinism and compatibilism.
P3: What am I?
It it the brain that makes humans unique?
What makes you so special? The brain probably has something to do with it. But what exactly? “If it seems like scientists trying to find the basis of human uniqueness in the brain are looking for a neural needle in a haystack, it’s because they are. Whatever makes us different is built on the bedrock of a billion years of common ancestry. Humans will never abandon the quest to prove that they are special. But nor can we escape the fact that our minds are a modest tweak on an ancient plan that originated millions of years before we came onto the scene.”
Free will, fate, chance
Some good books about freedom and luck. “Many philosophical theories try to evade the uncomfortable truth that luck and fate play a role in the conduct of our moral lives, argues philosopher Paul Russell. He chooses the best books on free will and responsibility. “
Why do your procrastinate?
Is it because you are a succession of selves and not a single self moving through time? “We think of our future selves as strangers.”
Hyperobjects … you’re only human
Are there objects too immense to comprehend? Review of Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects. “When he declares that the world is over, Morton is not summoning visions of a Hollywood We’re-all-gonna-die! cataclysm but, rather, the end of the cozy anthropocentric worldview that has governed Western thought since the advent of Greek philosophy. It doesn’t matter what you think of Kantian epistemology or Hegelian teleology because, Morton claims, the ‘privileged transcendental sphere’ of philosophy can’t protect us from ultraviolet rays or rising ocean levels.”
Why can’t we get along?
The uncertain biological basis of morality. Robert Wright’s review of Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes” Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them and Paul Bloom’s Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil. Which would do more to help us get along with them — a moral theory we can all agree on or a better understanding of how we are wired to think and feel about them? “If Greene thinks that getting people to couch their moral arguments in a highly reasonable language will make them highly reasonable, I think he’s underestimating the cleverness and ruthlessness with which our inner animals pursue natural selection’s agenda. We seem designed to twist moral discourse—whatever language it’s framed in—to selfish or tribal ends, and to remain conveniently unaware of the twisting. So maybe the first step toward salvation is to become more self-aware.”
The trolley comes round the corner
Clang Went the Trolley. Sarah Bakewell’s interesting review of two new books about the trolley problem: David Edmonds’ Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us About Right and Wrong and Thomas Cathcart’s The Trolley Problem; or, Would You Throw the Fat Guy off the Bridge? A Philosophical Conundrum. Bakewell’s conclusion: moral philosophers need not worry about being out of a job.
The brain … it makes you think. Doesn’t it?
Who’s in charge — you or your brain?
“Are we governed by unconscious processes? Neuroscience believes so – but isn’t the human condition more complicated than that?” David Eagleman and Raymond Tallis offer different views.
Thanksgiving reflection on moral luck
Nicholas Kristof on “where is the love?” “For those who are well-off, it may be easier to castigate the irresponsibility of the poor than to recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of enterprise and willpower, but also of random chance and early upbringing.”
Know thyself: the psychopath within?
The neuroscientist who discovered he was a psychopath.“Why has Fallon been able to temper his behavior, while other people with similar genetics and brain turn violent and end up in prison? … ‘I was loved, and that protected me,’ he says. … Of course, there’s also a third ingredient, in addition to genetics and environment: free will. ‘Since finding all this out and looking into it, I’ve made an effort to try to change my behavior,’ Fallon says.”
Socratically Speaking 