This post is inspired by a talk given by Sam Harris at the "Festival of Dangerous Ideas" in Sydney.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk Sam Harris claims that we have no freewill and when you look into the science, it becomes exceedingly clear that he is indeed correct. 

Probably the most touchy subject in the world!

But before we get into the delusion of freewill I would like to acknowledge that for a lot of people this is a very touchy subject and even if you are convinced that you have no freewill, as a matter of conscious experience you will always feel like you have freewill. So on what basis do I say that we have no freewill. Let us first do a thought experiment in the confines of our minds right now. First thing do you realize that there is a voice in your head passing commentary about everything. Even now as you read this mail the voice in your head is saying stuff constantly. Do you realize that these thoughts simply emerge into consciousness. You cannot stop them nor can you predict what the next thought is going to be. You cannot choose them before you think them because that would require that you think them before you think them. If you can't control your next thought and you don’t know what it is going to be until it appears, where is your freedom of will. Now coming back to the thought experiment.

Thought Experiment

Think of a film and notice what your conscious selection process is like. Notice first that this is as free a decision that you are ever going to make. You have all the movies in the world to pick from and there is no form of coercion or external influence. Now go ahead and pick another film and do notice how you end up picking the movie that you pick. Now I hope you chose a movie if not stop reading and choose one. Now that you are done. You know perfectly well that The Wizard of Oz is a movie but for some reason it wasn’t one of the contenders for the movie you picked. Now think of this, were you free to choose that which did not occur to you to choose. You probably thought of several films and you went back and forth between the options to finally settle on one and it is exactly this kind of mental dialogue that leads you to believe that you have freewill. But if you look closely it is a mystery why you choose one over the other. You might have a story to tell yourself about why you chose one over the other. But we know that those sorts of explanations are almost always wrong. You can take a person to the lab and prime him/her to give a certain response and when asked why they chose what they chose they almost always have a story to tell which has nothing to do with the priming. If you read Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman you would have come across a plethora of such examples. 

The thing to notice about this experiment is that you the conscious witness of your inner life isn't making these decisions, all you can do is witness these decisions. It has been demonstrated many times over in many labs that a person's conscious decision comes after process that can be detected and there is time lag between when the brain decides to do something and when you think you have decided to do something. Even the simplest and most voluntary decisions such as the decision to move your left hand vs your right can be observed in your brain before you actually do it. The experience of deciding comes after the decision has already been made by the brain. Do check out the second half of this video to see what I am talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmmYQJCReaQ    

The fact that we don’t have freewill has profound implications for how we see ourselves and the world around us. In my next post I will write about the implications of not having a Freewill. 

If you do come across any interesting stuff about the topic, please do share the link, I would love to expand my own understanding about the topic and also if you find any loopholes in the argument do point it out. I believe it is only with logical disagreement that we can expand our understanding of concepts.