Specter of Reason

Compatibilism is the idea that there is no conflict between determinism and free will.  Incompatibilism is the idea that free will cannot exist in a deterministic universe.  There's been a lot of discussion over which view is correct.  What's remarkable about the debate isn't so much the stubbornness or passion which has been exhibited by this or that party, but the fact that the very terms of the debate are controversial.  There is a great deal of confusion about what the key issues in the debate are and how we should be talking about them.  As a result, there is a meta-debate within the debate itself.  You cannot engage in the debate without also engaging in a debate about the debate--about what issues are at stake and about how the issues should be framed.  So here's what I want to do:  I want to explain why I think incompatibilists are doing a very bad job of framing the debate, and also why compatibilism is the most reasonable option on the t...

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Sam Harris' first book, the award-winning best seller, The End Of Faith . Over the past decade, he has earned a good deal of public acclaim and devotion, and for respectable reasons. Sam Harris is a gifted writer and speaker. His eloquence and clarity of expression are enviable. In addition, he has been an outspoken advocate of reason, critical thought and secular values when this has been sorely needed. For these reasons, I would like to see Harris as an ally and potential friend who, like me, wants to make the world more hospitable to atheism and reason. However, his attitude towards the decorum of professional philosophy is hurting the cause, and his own arguments are suffering, too. In his review of Harris' most recent book, Free Will , Daniel C. Dennett admonishes Harris for not doing his homework and not engaging with "the best thought on the topic." This sort of reaction to Harris is not uncommon from profession...

I still haven't explained why I think Harris' response to Dennett is embarrassingly bad.  It's not because Harris is wrong about free will.  It's about the arguments he gives and the tone with which he gives them.  But I'm not going to get into that in this post.  Instead, I want to discuss why Harris is wrong about free will.  I've recently laid out a brief argument on the topic, but I suspect that unsympathetic audiences are not likely to be satisfied by it.  They say they have a better grasp of how people think about free will.  I don't know what makes them think they're experts on the subject, but what I do know is that they seem very confused about the issues. Look at Jerry Coyne , one of Harris' sympathetic readers: "I still see compatibilism as a wasted effort by philosophers to save our felt notion that we have agency; that we could have chosen otherwise . . . . Even Nobel Laureate Steve Weinberg, a determinist if there ever was one, ...

[This post was significantly modified many times on February 19, 2014.] My responsibilities as a school teacher have led me to ignore most corners of the blogosphere since late last August, so I missed the fact that Sam Harris issued a Moral Landscape Challenge .  I just learned of it this morning, a little over a week after the deadline for submissions.  I'm very disappointed, since I very much want to participate.  I've therefore written a 760-word essay, and I hope Sam Harris will consider it.  I don't expect any rules to be broken on my account, but I think the consideration of my arguments is more important than whether or not I qualify for a monetary reward.  (Not that I couldn't use the money!  School teachers tend to be overworked and underpaid, and Poland is anything but an exception.)  Obviously the best of the essays submitted during the official entry period deserves to win the $2,000 prize.  But if that essay doesn't change Harris' ...

I don't have the time, and don't see much of value, in posting at length about Dennett's recent review of Sam Harris' book, Free Will , or Sam Harris' reply.  I did, once upon a time , suggest that such a review from Dennett might be worth reading, though I quickly changed my mind, supposing that silence from Dennett would be better.  As it turns out, I'm not sure.  A lot of Harris' fans and supporters are still in need of argumentation to understand why Dennett (and others) think they are mistaken.  And Dennett is more capable than most when it comes to clearly and persuasively laying out arguments.  And yet, even after he has done so, he is accused of missing the point.  On top of that, his snarky tone--fully justified, in my opinion--is used against him.  So, in unsnarky terms, and without addressing particular moments in this debate, let me try to get to (and unravel) the bottom line. Harris' main contention is that there is a certain lived expe...

At the end of Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street," the hero Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is leading a seminar on persuasion, and he asks members of the audience to sell him his own pen.  We see their faces as they look up at him, to him, as a hero, a guide.  There are two possible attitudes to take:  The audience in the film can represent us, the theater audience, looking to Belfort as a hero who can teach us how to be winners; or we can detach ourselves from the audience in the film and see them as gullible dupes who would be better off walking away from Belfort.  It's not entirely clear which attitude the film wants us to take, but I'm pretty set on one interpretation.  I want to read "The Wolf Of Wall Street" as a send up of Hollywood itself. Scorsese's Belfort isn't just a good salesman.  He's a natural.  Sure, we can say that he is so successful because he gleefully breaks the rules and cons people, but he never would hav...