thesigil

The URL seems to be wrong. Here is the link to the article, http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/to-profile-or-not-to-prof...

Thanks for pointing out that am doing a lousy job of putting across Dr. Harris's work, :) And I think that is mainly because of the way am putting the thought experiment across without a lot of premise being set, which is clearly set in the talk he gives. Many people misunderstand that non-existence of free will means everything is predetermined, which is not the case we all know. It does not matter if you have a lot of skills, but it matters if you use them. It does not matter if you have not understood some subjects, rather than blaming someone else about it, it matters if you improve on them. And he is not the only one whose work lead to the conclusion of free will being incoherent, there are many other biologists who prove the same. Now what is remarkable about Sam's work is that he also takes care of proving that the illusion of free will is also an illusion. When Harris is saying methods of science being applied to look at morality, he is not the first one to propose so, there have been many prominent schools of thought, to name one Hindu philosophy, which have also spoken the same. The way Harris is speaking about methods of science is that every individual can apply it for themselves and see it for themselves. There need not be any investigating authority other than the privacy of our mind :) I have applied methods of science myself to what Harris is saying and then coming and posting here. Please do not criticize him or his work without even looking at it :) Methods of science mean that results of an experiment being verifiable by all.

Hi, I am not a parent, but I think I have to put across this point of the way of looking at morality being independent of "free will", because "free will" is an illusion and the illusion of "free will" is also an illusion. The non-existence of free will should not be confused with fatalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism. Morality and love and compassion can still be quantified without free will. What goes away are actually the negative feelings like hatred, anger and pride and shame.

Let us take a simple thought experiment. Let me ask you to choose a book. Let us make it simple, let us remove all the books that you do not know about, and just consider the books that you are aware of being great. If you have already chosen one, drop it as it is wrong, don't ask me how, but I know, and this time be sensitive to the process of choosing a book. This is the most freest of choice that you ever will get to make, so free will better be here or else it is no where. Do you observe that there is a certain gap from the time I ask you to pick a book, and then there is certain gap and then suddenly there are a list of books in your mind. There is no way you can explain why you didn't think of The Godfather even though you know it is a great book. Let us say you thought about Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman and Seven years in Tibet. You have just finished one book in the series of Harry Potter and you are not interested in reading fiction again, so eliminate that, then you are only left with Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman and Seven years in Tibet, say you like reading biographies so you chose Seven years in Tibet and Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, now when you have only these two options and there is no coherent opposition that is present in the system, only then comes the free aspect. There is still no way you can explain why you did not think otherwise, of choosing another book in the series of Harry Potter and reading more fiction. So where is the free will here? All of this still does not eradicate the feeling of love and compassion we feel and does not make everyone guilty by reason of insanity.

All of this is much more well articulated by Sam Harris who holds a Ph.D in neurobiology and graduate in Philosophy. He talks about the delusion of free will at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk

Here is another piece of his work where he promotes scientific thinking and argues that moral questions are best pursued using, not just philosophy, but methods of science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape

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