Final Thoughts on Free Will (Episode #241)

Key Takeaway

Today, pause before reacting to a difficult person—including yourself—and ask: “What prior causes might be operating here?” This is not an excuse for harmful behavior; choices, boundaries, and consequences still matter. But replacing reflexive blame with curiosity can reduce hatred and make your response more effective. Then take one small constructive action—have the conversation, change the environment, seek help, or set a boundary—that improves the causes shaping what happens next.

Episode Overview

Sam Harris presents a sustained argument that free will, as the feeling of being the conscious author of thoughts and actions, cannot be found in experience. Using introspection and a movie-choice exercise, he argues that thoughts and decisions arise unbidden, while maintaining that reasoning, effort, learning, incentives, and moral responses still matter because they are causes within the world.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Final Thoughts on Free Will (Episode #241) from Making Sense with Sam Harris. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris speaking. I just wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this, you 're not on our subscriber list and you'll only hear the first part of this conversation. To access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you will need to subscribe at samharris.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcast app, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't include ads in the podcast, and therefore it's made possible thanks to the support of our subscribers.

So , if you enjoy what we do here, please consider becoming one of them. As always, I don't want money to be the reason why someone can't access the podcast. If you can't afford a subscription, there's an option at samharris.org to request a free account, and we approve 100% of those requests, no questions asked. I have said and written a lot about free will over the years and wanted to gather all my thoughts, or the most effective ones, in one place. Many of you find my argument against free will very provocative and even unpleasant.

And many confuse it with a philosophical argument that has no direct contact with experience. So I want to see if I can do this all at once and really take some of you with me to the end. Okay , this is the starting point. Most people believe they have a self that enjoys something called free will. In fact, this feeling of identity and the feeling of having free will are , in reality, two sides of the same coin. But here I will focus on free will because, in many ways, it is easier to deconstruct .

To my surprise, I discovered that this is a very sensitive topic. Therefore, I want to offer the usual disclaimer. If you feel uncomfortable thinking about these things, you must judge whether that discomfort is healthy and worth exploring further , or whether it actually harms you. And in that last case, just skip this journey with me. It is probably no coincidence that many people find the idea that free will may be an illusion provocative, as it seems to touch on almost everything they care about. Morality, law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, feelings of guilt, and personal achievement.

Most of what makes us distinctively human seems to depend on our seeing each other as agents capable of free choice. And I say "seems" because I don't really think that's the case, but it might take some time to realize it. Most people believe that the challenge lies in reconciling a subjective fact, the fact that we experience free will, with objective reality, the way in which physical causes and events arise in the universe. But I want you to analyze this. What I hope to convey to you is that the illusion of free will is, in itself, an illusion.

There is no such illusion of free will, nor are there any subjective facts about it that can be reconciled with the truths of physics and neurophysiology. In fact, our conscious experience is perfectly compatible with a scientific view of reality that does not stop or change character at the limit of our skin. Many people are concerned that the consequences of dispensing with free will must be negative. Obviously, this would not suggest that free will actually exists, but in general terms, this statement about negative outcomes is also not true.

Losing belief in free will can, in fact, have very positive consequences. To begin with, it eliminates any rational basis for hating people, and we'll explore that later. Let's start from the beginning. The popular conception of free will is based on two assumptions. The first is that each of us was free to think and act differently than we did in the past. We chose A, but we could have chosen B. You became an accountant, but you could have decided to be a firefighter. You ate chocolate ice cream last night , but you could have chosen vanilla.

For most of us, it certainly seems like this is the world we live in. The second assumption is that we are the conscious source of many of our thoughts and actions in the present. His sense of deciding what to do at any given moment seems to be the real origin of his subsequent behavior. You feel like you want to reach for and pick up an object, and then you do it. The conscious part of you that wants, tries, and perceives seems to have control over at least some of your thoughts and actions.

However, there are plenty of reasons to believe that both assumptions are false. Of course, there is very little disagreement about the fact that events have causes. Everything that arises seems to come into existence due to some previous state of the universe. Perhaps there is some point of view from which all this turns out to be an illusion . Perhaps there is a way to view the cosmos in its entirety, or reality itself, and say that nothing has really happened, right? That change itself, the process of cause and effect , is an illusion.

But let's leave that possibility aside for the moment. Most of the time, things certainly seem to happen. A lightning bolt strikes a tree and starts a fire . A few lines of computer code make your phone ring. TRUE? People are born, grow old, and then die. Everywhere we look, we see patterns of events. And all these events have prior causes, which means that they depend materially, functionally, and logically on other events that preceded them in time. And, most relevant to our purposes, all our conscious experiences, our thoughts, intentions, desires, and the actions and decisions that result from them, are caused by events of which we are unaware and which we do not cause.

You didn't choose your parents. Therefore, you did not choose your genes, nor the environment in which you were born. And yet, the totality of these facts determines who you are at any given moment and what you will do in the next. And even if you think you have an immaterial soul that somehow animates this machinery, you didn't choose your soul. The next thing you think and do can only arise from this totality of previous causes. And it can only arise in one of two ways. Legally, that is , deterministically, like one domino being knocked over by another, or at random.

Now, randomness is a very interesting concept, and it's not clear how widespread it might be. There are arguments against determinism, especially in quantum mechanics , that suggest that subatomic particles themselves make " free choices," meaning that there is nothing in the previous history of the universe that tells them what to do next. And if what a particle does next, well, then there's no theory that can predict what it will do next. I am not taking a position against this at the particle level, but I maintain that this kind of independence from prior causes would not give people the psychological freedom they believe they have.

OK? For two reasons. The first is that everything indicates that larger systems , such as human brains, behave in a more deterministic way. But, more importantly, randomness of any kind would not give people free will. There is no will in randomness. If you ever did something that was truly random, that had no relation to previous states of your brain. If it literally arose from nothing, that wouldn't be what you or anyone else understands by free will. You'd think, "What on earth did I just do?" Right?

And why did I do it? Such an action would be precisely the kind of thing we would consider out of place, because , by definition, it would lack character. Having character means being noticeably in line with previous trends, right? It follows a pattern. Something truly random would be impossible to analyze. TRUE? There would literally be no answer to the question of why you did it. With true randomness, there is no reason why. That's not what we mean by will, much less a free will. TRUE? That is not psychological continuity through time.

The problem is that neither determinism nor randomness, nor any combination of both, justifies the feeling that most people have and call free will. The feeling of being free to think and do more or less whatever they want in the present, in a way that allows them to be something more than a mere concatenation of causes or mysterious influences; to be something more than a natural phenomenon. People don't want to believe that they are, in a sense, like a wave breaking on the shore. But that's how causes spread, or seem to spread.

Many scientists and philosophers have recognized the problem here, but most seem to think that we must live with the illusion of free will or use euphemisms about it . And I maintain that that is a mistake. So what do most people mean by free will? Well, there is controversy about this among philosophers and scientists, but I think the central false intuition is quite clear, and it results from how our subjectivity is structured or appears to be structured. Again, the feeling of having free will is directly connected to the feeling of being a self.

Regarding free will, it can be summarized as follows. Most people feel that the conscious part of their minds, the part that experiences their experience, thinks their thoughts, and feels their feelings, has real control over their mental life and behavior. They feel that they are the source of their intentions and actions. Not only do these mental and physical states arise in their bodies in some way, but they are initiated by their conscious minds in some way. The fact that something happens in a person's body isn't really the point, is it?

People do not feel free to make their hearts beat or to stop them. They don't feel like they are causing their cells to divide or metabolize energy. They don't feel like they have control over their livers, do they? But they do feel that they are the source of their thoughts and voluntary actions. And at any given moment, they feel free to think and do something different. Now, maybe you feel this. Perhaps you feel that if you could rewind the film of your life and return the universe to the precise state it was in a moment ago, you might think and behave differently.

I think there is no doubt that most people assume this about themselves and others. not philosophically, but implicitly as a sense of how they exist in the world. This seems to be the very essence of what it means to make ourselves and others morally responsible for our actions. If someone does something to intentionally hurt you, you feel like they should n't have done it, right? They could and should have acted differently. And you have a grievance against them that is very different from how you feel about a malfunctioning machine or a gust of wind that could cause the same damage.

TRUE? So the reason why discussions about free will are so tense is that declaring that free will is an illusion strikes at the very heart of what people feel to be true about their own subjectivity at any given moment. And it appears to have implications for a wide variety of moral norms. As we will see, the implications are not what many people think. I will argue that our morality actually improves once we recognize that free will is meaningless. But again, the consequences of believing or not believing in free will are quite separable from any claim about what is true.

One simply cannot argue for the reality of free will based on the imagined positive effects of believing in it. And regarding what is true, the problem is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that free will exists. There is no objective reason, and there is no subjective reason either. Ultimately, believing in free will is analogous to believing that if you rewound this audio, I could finish this sentence differently. As I said, traditionally, this has been seen as a philosophical dead end. We know we have free will because we experience it directly.

But we simply cannot see how to make sense of it in terms of physical causality. But as I hope to show you, there is no dead end because there is also no experiential reason to believe in free will. the experiential you , the conscious witness of your inner life, the one who is listening to these words right now. You are not the author of your thoughts, intentions, and actions. Rather, the subsequent thoughts, intentions, and actions simply arise and are noticed. But this does not mean that there is no difference between voluntary and involuntary behavior.

There is. Let's take a closer look at this . Reach out for something and take it now, and pay attention to what the experience is like. Now, whether you are aware of it or not, voluntary behavior is structured by intention and expectation. Your brain produces a prospective model of what is about to happen. And if the pattern is violated, you'll notice that you know what it's like to reach out for something and accidentally knock it over. For example, successfully manipulating an object feels different from simply bumping into it and produces different results.

And voluntary actions can be consciously interrupted; that is, we can feel the impulse to stop them. And this boost is effective. And, of course, they can be deterred by other people and by legal sanctions. An involuntary action such as a muscle spasm, a reflex, a seizure, or tripping and falling cannot be discouraged. So there are many differences here. Good. What someone does voluntarily says more about them, about what they want for example, and about what they are likely to do in the future, than an involuntary action.

Doing something on purpose reveals something about one's purpose in life. We don't need a concept of free will to notice these differences. And as I will make clear later, most of our ethical judgments remain intact when we abandon the illusion of free will. But not everything stays the same. And some of the things that do change are, in fact, quite important. Again, I want to point out what is new in my argument here. Most philosophers and scientists believe that we have an undeniable experience of free will.

And the challenge is to understand it in terms of a causal landscape that seems not to allow it, whether deterministic or random. I maintain that we do not have the experience we think we have. There is no such experience of free will. So, let's take a closer look at our experience. Consider how your thoughts arise, because they are the basis of most of your complex behavior, certainly your most deliberate behavior. If you pay attention to the thinking process, you will see that your thoughts simply appear in consciousness, much like my words.

In fact, you may notice that you don't decide what you think next any more than you decide what I say next. I mean, what are you going to think about next? You do n't know yet. Your thoughts determine what you want, what you intend, and what you do afterward. Your thoughts determine your goals and whether or not you believe you have achieved them. They determine what you say to other people and what you don't say. In fact, thoughts determine almost everything that makes you human. Now, most people feel that they are the thinkers of their thoughts and, therefore, their authors.

And this is one way to describe the feeling of self . Subjectively speaking, as a matter of experience, there is no thinker to be found in the mind apart from one's own thoughts. There is no subject at the center of the experience. Everything, including thoughts, intentions, counter-thoughts, and counter-intentions, is arising on its own. And the feeling that there is a thinker in addition to the flow of thoughts is what it feels like to think without knowing that you are thinking. It is the feeling of identifying with the train of thoughts that passes through consciousness at this moment.

But if you pay attention to how thoughts arise, you'll see that they simply appear, literally, out of nowhere. And you are not free to choose them before they appear. That would require you to think them through before you think about them. So here's the question. If you cannot control your next thought, if you cannot decide what it will be before it arises, and if you cannot prevent it from arising, where is your free will? At this point, you might be thinking, "What on earth is he talking about?" This is what I 'm talking about.

You didn't choose that thought either. If what I'm saying confuses you, it wasn't you who caused that confusion. You didn't choose to be confused. On the contrary, if you understand what I'm saying and find it interesting, you didn't create that state of mind either. And if your mind wanders to thoughts about lunch and you missed half of what I just said, you didn't choose to be distracted. Everything just happens, including your thoughts, intentions, and desires. and most deliberate actions . You are part of the universe and there is no place where you can be located outside of its causal structure.

And as we'll see, there's no one there to stand on either, is there? In the end, you are not a me. You are certainly not a subject in the middle of the experience nor on its edge. You are not on the riverbank observing the flow of consciousness because, as a matter of experience, there is only the flow and you are identical to it. This is not a metaphysical statement. I'm not talking about how consciousness relates to the physical universe. I'm talking about your actual experience right now .

As a matter of experience, you're not having an experience from somewhere outside of experience. There is only experience . You are not on the edge of your life looking inward. You're not sitting in the theater of your mind watching a movie about your life. And the feeling that you are, the feeling that you can be separate from everything that is happening. And this feeling of being free to choose what you do next, what you notice next, what you pay attention to next. This feeling is itself part of the film.

Even more appearances within consciousness. There is only consciousness and its contents at this moment. Again, this is not just a philosophical point. Most people think that free will really exists and is just difficult to translate into the physics of things, or that it doesn't exist and we must admit that we live under a powerful illusion. But that's not what I'm saying. I say that free will does not exist and, in fact, it is such an incoherent concept that it is impossible to say what would have to be true in the world for it to exist.

There is really no way for causes to emerge that give meaning to this notion of free will. But I am making a much more fundamental claim about the nature of conscious experience. I say that the illusion of free will does not exist. If you pay attention, you can see that your experience is fully compatible with the truth of determinism, or determinism plus randomness. Let's do a little experiment. Just close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths . And now think of a movie. It could be one you've seen or just one whose name you know, right ?

It doesn't have to be good. It can be bad. Whatever comes to mind, it doesn't matter. And pay attention to what this experience is like. You probably had some movies come to mind. Choose one and pay attention to what the experience of choosing is like. Now, the first thing you should notice is that this is a choice as free as any other you will make in your life. TRUE? You are completely free. You have all the movies in the world to choose from, you can pick any one you want and you can pause this audio and take all the time you want.

Now let's do it again . TRUE? I want you to become sensitive to this process. So forget the first movie and choose another one. And again, pay attention to what you actually experience here. What is it like to choose? What is it like to make this choice completely free? You have a new movie. Okay, do it one more time, alright? Just clean the whiteboard. Think of a few more movies and choose one. Did you see any evidence of free will here? Because if it's not here, it's nowhere, right?

So we'd better be able to find it here. So, let's look for it. Okay, first, let's put aside all the movies you've never seen or heard of, and whose names and images are unfamiliar to you, right ? Needless to say, you couldn't choose one of those. And there is no freedom in that, obviously, because you couldn't have chosen one of them even if your life depended on it. But then there are many other films whose names you know well. Many of which you have seen, but which did not occur to you to choose.

For example, you know perfectly well that The Wizard of Oz is a movie, but you just didn't think about it. And if you thought of The Wizard of Oz , sorry, right? But you understand what I mean. You can exchange it for The Seventh Seal, Mission Impossible, or American Sniper. And if you're hearing this for the first time and you thought of all those movies, well, then we really do live in a simulation. And apparently everything revolves around you. So consider the few movies that came to mind, right?

In light of all the movies that could have come to mind but didn't, ask yourself: were you free to choose what you didn't think to choose? As a matter of neurophysiology, your Wizard of Oz circuits were not active a few moments ago for reasons you cannot know and could not control. Based on the state of your brain, The Wizard of Oz was not an option, even though you know this movie absolutely and perfectly . And if we could return your brain to the state it was in a moment ago and account for all the noise in the system, adding in any contribution of randomness, whatever it may be, you would stop thinking about The Wizard of Oz over and over and over again until the end of time.

Where is the freedom in that? It is important to see that, whether the universe is completely determined or allows for randomness , the picture is the same. Okay, determinism doesn't give you freedom. Obviously, it would only be a mere biochemical mechanism. But randomness doesn't give you freedom either. If you knew that your next movie choice would be the result of a random process, some quantum roll of the dice, that would be the antithesis of what most people understand by free will. There is no will in that.

And if that same random influence appeared a billion times in a row just by chance , you would think of the same movie a billion times in a row just by chance . In other words, no matter how we think about causality, whether things are determined, random, or a combination of both, there is no place for you as a conscious subject that is not subject to causes that you cannot inspect or anticipate. Everything is simply appearing in consciousness. Again, focus on the experience here. You can forget about metaphysics.

Free will is a long-standing problem for philosophy and science for a reason. People think they experience it. They feel like they have it. Do you experience it? Again, if not here, then nowhere. TRUE? The only restriction you've been given is to think of a movie. You can choose whichever one you want and you can take all the time you need. It is likely that all other decisions you have made in your life have been more restricted than this one. What job to accept, who to marry, whether to have children, who to vote for; Most decisions in life are much more obviously limited by other variables than this one.

So, if you're not free to simply choose a movie right now, I don't know where you're going to find free will anywhere in your life. So pay close attention to the experience . Do it one more time. Choose a movie, any movie. Good. We can use my films here to describe the experience. I thought of Chinatown, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Alien. And let's just say I thought, "I'm going to choose Chinatown," right? But then , at the last second, I thought, "No, I'm going to choose Alien." This is the type of decision that motivates the idea of ​​free will.

You go back and forth between two or more options, and then you decide on one without suffering any obvious coercion or pressure from the outside world. It's just you and your thoughts, right? And it seems like you're doing everything. So, I choose Alien instead of Chinatown. He seemed completely free to make that choice. But when I look closely, I can see that I'm not in a position to know why these films occurred to me in the first place or why I chose Alien over Chinatown. In other words, I might have some additional story to tell about my choice.

Now I might think, "Well, everyone says Chinatown is a great movie, but it 's actually kind of boring, so I chose Alien, which isn't boring." But, of course, we know from a vast body of psychological literature that these kinds of explanations are often pure fiction. And when people are manipulated in a laboratory, they always seem to have a story about why they did what they did. And it often has no relation whatsoever to what actually influenced them. It is simply a fact that our judgments about the causes of our own behavior are often unreliable.

Generally, this comes courtesy of the left hemisphere of the brain. But even if I'm right in this case about why I chose Alien over Chinatown, I'm not in a position to know why my memory of Chinatown being boring had the effect it did. Why didn't it have the opposite effect? ​​Why didn't I think about choosing a classic, regardless of whether it's boring or not? What needs to be noted is that you, as a conscious witness of your inner life, are not making decisions. All you can do is witness the decisions once they have been made.

No matter how many times you go back and forth between two options , no matter how many other thoughts arise to color this process, leaning towards one option or the other, the process itself is irreducibly mysterious from your point of view. And whether these mental events are entirely determined or partly random , the experience is the same. Everything is just happening on its own. Now I say pick a movie and there's this moment before something has changed for you and then the names of the movies start appearing on the margins of consciousness and you have no control over which ones appear, none.

None at all. Can you feel that? You can't choose them before they choose themselves. In other words , it could very well be someone else whispering the movie titles in your ear because of everything you did to summon them. And the same can be said of the process of choosing among the candidates who do appear. Even if you go back and forth between two options for an hour, choosing randomly, you can't know why you stop at the one you finally choose. If you pay attention to how your thoughts arise and how decisions are actually made , you will see that there is no evidence of free will.

Not only is there no evidence, it is impossible to make sense of the claim that free will could exist. What could it refer to? Forget about the physics of things. What could that refer to in your experience? Everything is simply emerging from the darkness. What will you think, try, want , ignore, or forget and then suddenly remember next? Our experience of being and acting in the world is fully compatible with the truth of determinism or determinism plus randomness. And this has implications not only for our sense of self, but also for our ethics and our view of others.

And this understanding can be extraordinarily liberating psychologically. It can lead to greater compassion for both others and ourselves . And far from making us passive, an understanding of the illusory nature of free will can allow us to behave much more intelligently in life, as we shall see. I have been arguing that there is no such thing as free will. So, what exists? Well, there is luck, both good and bad, and it depends on what we do with it. Actually, that 's not entirely true. What you do with your luck is also just more luck.

Once again, you didn't choose your parents. You did not choose the society you were born into. There is not a single cell in your body or brain that you, as a conscious subject, have created. Nor is there a single influence from the outside world that you have originated. And yet, everything you think and do arises from this ocean of prior causes. Therefore , what you do with your luck and the tools you use, including the level of effort and discipline you manage to muster at any given moment, is also a matter of luck.

I mean, how do you explain your capacity for effort? How do you explain when you're lazy? How do you explain when you're lazy, but suddenly you get inspired and make a great effort? You ca n't. The "you" who experiences a sudden inspiration, or who doubles their effort, or who loses courage; The "you" who rises to the occasion or freezes up is not in control. At every moment, there is a mystery behind you, and it is producing everything you can notice. Your thoughts, intentions, desires, inhibitions, and all the behaviors and course corrections that result from them.

This is an objective truth about your subjective experience. You cannot inspect your causes. However, most people resist this idea, seemingly at any intellectual cost. And yet, this single idea is the antidote to arrogance and hatred, and provides a deep basis for compassion, both towards others and towards oneself. It is the basis for real forgiveness, again, both towards others and towards oneself. It is literally the path to redemption and is the only view of human nature that breaks with the logic of retribution . This notion of punishment as justified revenge allows us to simply consider what actually works to change people's behavior for the better, so that we can achieve the results we truly want in the world.

But before we get into ethics, we need to clear up some of the confusion. At this point, many people begin to wonder about the importance of choice and decision-making. If there is no free will, how do we do anything? And why do anything? Why not just wait and see what happens? There is no free will, but choices matter. And this is not a paradox. Your desires, intentions, and decisions arise from the current state of the universe, which includes your brain and your soul, if such a thing exists, along with all their influences.

Your mental states are part of a causal framework. So, your choices matter, whether or not they are the product of a brain or a soul, because they are often the proximate cause of your actions. Imagine I want to learn to speak Mandarin. Okay, how is that going to happen? It's not going to happen by accident. I'll have to attend classes, hire a native tutor, or travel to China. I will have to study and practice, and this will require a lot of effort. And I will feel frustrated and ashamed of my failures.

And I will have to overcome my frustration and embarrassment, and keep learning. My decision to learn Mandarin and all the efforts that follow, if they persist long enough, will cause me to speak Mandarin at some point in the future. Bad, I'm sure. It's not that I was destined to speak Mandarin regardless of my thoughts and actions. Determinism is not fatalism. Choices, reasoning, discipline; All these things play obvious roles in our lives even though they are determined by previous causes. And again, adding randomness to this machinery changes nothing.

But the reality is that I show no signs of making an effort to learn Mandarin. It's simply not a priority for me. Am I free to make it a priority? Well, in a way yes, but not in the crucial way required by the common notion of free will. I can't explain why I don't want to speak Mandarin more than I do. I cannot decide to make learning this language my top priority when it simply is n't. And if it suddenly became the most important thing in my life, I wouldn't have created this change in myself.

He would be a mere witness to this change. It would invade me like a virus. If tomorrow I read an article that convinces me that the best use of the next few years of my life is to become proficient in Mandarin, I will not be able to explain why this article had that effect. I've read articles like this before and they haven't moved me. If the next person does, where's the freedom in that? It would be like being pushed off a cliff and then claiming that I am free to fall.

The fact that I can enjoy the feeling of the wind in my hair does not change this situation. And so it is with any other influence. A conversation with another person, or indeed a conversation with oneself, simply has the effect it has and no other. You are free to do an almost infinite number of things today. Free in the sense that no one will try to stop you from doing these things or put you in prison if you do them. But you are not free to want what you do n't really want, nor to want something more than you already do.

You are not free to notice what you will not notice, nor to remember what you have truly forgotten. Again, consider your experience at this time. Are you going to spend the rest of today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and so on for countless days, striving to master a skill you don't care about at all? Are you going to learn Mandarin, the violin, or fencing? Are you going to start collecting stones? Why aren't you more interested in stones? There are people who are passionate about stones.

Why aren't you one of those people? If you suddenly became one of them and started dedicating all your free time to looking for interesting stones, freely doing what you love most, you would be collecting stones to your liking. Where is the freedom in that? And if your interest suddenly disappeared and you no longer cared about the stones, where would freedom be in that? The universe is playing with you. But decisions still matter because causes matter. Change matters, and the ability to make changes matters. Biological evolution and cultural progress have increased our ability to get what we want from life and avoid what we don't want.

A person who can reason effectively, plan for the future, choose their words carefully, regulate their negative emotions, play fair with strangers, and participate in various cultural institutions is very different from someone who cannot do any of those things. But these abilities do not lend credence to the traditional notion of free will. Sometimes people ask: well, if there is no free will, why are you trying to convince someone of something? People will simply believe what they believe . Your effort to convince them that they do not have free will is proof that you believe they do.

Again, this is a confusion between determinism and fatalism. Reasoning is possible. Not because you are free to think as you wish, but because you are not free . Reason makes us all slaves. To be convinced by an argument is to be subjugated by it. It's being forced to believe it, regardless of your preferences. Think about what it's like not to know something and then to find out. To learn something despite your prior ignorance or contrary presuppositions. To be caught up in an argument that is valid and true.

Being guided step by step through unknown terrain without detecting a mistake, without seeing where to put a foot or a hand to stop your progress. Arriving at the necessary conclusion is the antithesis of freedom. You are almost as free as any prisoner who has been led to the gallows. It is the lack of freedom that makes reasoning possible. That's why I know that an argument that worked for me should also work for you. And if it shouldn't work for you, it shouldn't have worked for me either.

The reasoning deals with limitations. 2 + 2 equals 4. Where's the freedom in that? It matters that 2 + 2 equals 4. And it matters that each of us can be made to understand that by being forced to think under the same logical constraints. Are you free to not understand that 2 + 2 equals 4? No, if you actually understand it. Are you free to understand it if you don't understand it? Again, no. TRUE? Not until understanding itself awakens in your mind. So whether you understand something or not, that's not under your control.

But the difference absolutely matters. And knowledge on all fronts absolutely matters. It is as important as we imagine it to be. In fact, it's probably more important than most people realize. Physicist David Deutsch has argued that knowledge can produce any change in the universe compatible with its laws. Because if change cannot be achieved, if you wish to continue listening to this conversation, you will need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, along with other subscriber-only content , including bonus episodes, Q& A sessions, and the conversations I've been having on the Waking Up app.

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