Making Sense of Free Will | Episode 5 of The Essential Sam Harris

In this episode, we examine the timeless question of “free will”:
what constitutes it, what is meant by it, what ought to be meant
by it, and, of course, whether we have it at all. We start with
the neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky who begins to deflate the
widely held intuition and assumption of “libertarian free will”
by drawing out a mechanistic and determined description of the
universe.


We then hear from the philosopher who has long been Sam’s
intellectual wrestling opponent on this subject, Daniel Dennett.
Dennett and Sam spar about definitional and epistemological
frameworks of what Dennett insists is “free will,” and what Sam
contends could never be.


The author and physicist Sean Carroll then engages Sam with more
attempts to find a philosophically defensible notion of free will
by leaning on the unknowable nature of the universe revealed by
quantum mechanics. We then listen in on Sam’s engagement with the
mathematician and author Judea Pearl who focuses on matters of
causation to tease out a freedom of will.


After a historical review of Princess Elizabeth’s famous
exchanges with Rene Descartes, we hear from the biologist Jerry
Coyne, who firmly agrees with Sam that a deterministic picture of
reality leaves absolutely no room for anything like free will.


We then hear from the curiously entertaining mind of comedian and
producer Ricky Gervais who was thinking about free will while
taking a bath when he decided to phone Sam.


We conclude with Sam’s own response to concerns that an erasure
of free will inevitably result in fatalism, loss of meaning, and
passive defeat. Sam insists that the loss of free will actually
pushes us in the opposite direction where we begin to see hatred
and vengeance as incoherent and start to connect with a deeper
and truer sense of genuine compassion.


 


About the Series


Filmmaker Jay Shapiro has produced The Essential Sam
Harris, a new series of audio
documentaries exploring the major topics that Sam has
focused on over the course of his career.


Each episode weaves together original analysis, critical
perspective, and novel thought experiments with some of the most
compelling exchanges from the Making Sense archive. Whether you
are new to a particular topic, or think you have your mind made
up about it, we think you’ll find this series fascinating.