Sam Harris is a largely accessible philosopher; he writes books that laypeople can easily understand. However, doing so comes at the cost of his academic honesty and integrity. The argument Harris provides against free will is largely disingenuous and avoids confronting any of the comprehensive literature by academic philosophers by making his own assumptions and essentially plugging his ears and kicking and screaming when he confronts other ideas. While I myself will attempt to critique his argument, I shall note that the professional philosopher Daniel Dennett has done so as well, and probably far better than I ever could do.

Before I delve into Harris’ book, I shall briefly define the three most common positions in the free will debate. Firstly, there is a distinction between incompatibilists and compatibilists, this refers to whether the concepts of free will and determinism can co-exist. In the incompatibilist camp, there exists libertarians, who believe free will to be true and determinism to be false, and hard determinists, who believe determinism to be true and free will to be false. Compatibilists believe both determinism and free will are compatible. It is worth noting that Harris, who takes a hard determinist position, is in the vast minority in the debate, as most academic, professional philosophers are compatibilists. However, this is not detrimental to Harris’ arguments, as perhaps philosophers have been blinded by their dogmatic slumber.

Harris’ hard determinism begins by stating that free will is an illusion because we don’t create our wills. Thus, to have free will, one must create their will. Contrarily, Harry Frankfurt in his Freedom of Will and Concept of A Person defines free will as, “the conformity of one’s will to their second-order volitions.” Second-order volitions are those things that we want to desire. Perhaps the best example of this provided is the unwilling addict, while he wants to take drugs, his second-order volition is that he does not want to take these drugs. Thus, it may be true that he acts freely on the basis of doing what he wants, that being drugs, he does not have free will as the will he has does not abide by his second-order desires, that being to not do drugs.

It is of note that Harris provides no argument against Frankfurt’s conception of free will, but we shall continue nonetheless. Harris claims that if our wills are determined by prior causes, we are not responsible for them. However, it is unclear why our will is not free if we want the will we have, à la Frankfurt. Harris provides no argument against this.

Harris claims that free will as popularly defined rests on the idea we could have done differently, and that we are the conscious source of our thoughts and actions. It is unclear why he thinks this, as popular conceptions (see Frankfurt) rest on neither of these assumptions.

Harris continues by claiming there is no free will as our mental states just happen and we don’t know why. This seems besides the point for free will. Sure, I don’t know what I will think until I think it, but this has no effect on my wanting the will I have.

On page thirteen, Harris considers what it would take to have freedom of will, “you would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to have complete control over those factors.” Harris appears to be claiming that what free will requires is one to essentially be a God, one must be an uncaused cause, and otherwise they aren’t free. By defining free will in such a way, Harris seems to have constructed a tautology. It is true by definition we don’t have Harris’ free will, as the concept of an uncaused cause is incoherent. Does this prove we do not have free will, or does this prove that Harris’ has adopted a faulty definition without defensible reasons for doing so?

In arguing against compatibilism, Harris claims that compatibilist free will is not the free will most people think they have. This is an empirical claim, and to make an empirical claim requires sufficient empirical evidence. None is provided, and as such, we have no reason to be persuaded by his claim from left field that most people think this way. Furthermore, Harris states, “compatibilists generally claim that a person is free as long as he is free from any outer or inner compulsions that would prevent him from action on his actual desires and intentions.” This seems to vaguely suggest Harris is familiar with a concept similar to Frankfurt’s, and is simply ignoring it. Harris rebuts this by claiming, “the truth, however, is that people claim greater autonomy than this.” Once again, an empirical claim presented without evidence.

In considering crimes committed according to one’s free will, Harris claims that this means those who committed it must have been able to behave differently. Frankfurt specifically refutes this requirement of free will with a thought experiment similar to this: I am approaching a fork in the road, unbeknownst to me, you have seized control of my mind, and if I choose to go left at the fork, you will take control and make me go right. However, I decide, on my own, to go right. Seemingly, I acted on my own, despite not having been able to do any different. Harris provides no rebuttal for such an idea.

Harris comes even closer to the Frankfurt view when he claims that people often have competing desires, and seemingly there is no freedom when one desire triumphs over another. Frankfurt agrees, and thus made a requirement of free will that one must desire to have the will they do, one must want what they want. Harris refuses to acknowledge this. Harris concludes his compatibilist attacks by claiming free will to compatibilists is a puppet loving his strings. This is strikingly similar to a Frankfurtian view; however, Harris describes the view in a nonchalant way and brushes it off, whilst providing no viable arguments against it.

Harris considers the compatibilist claim that unconscious causes are as much apart of us as are our conscious ones. However, he claims that, “the psychological truth is that people feel identical to a certain channel of information in their conscious minds.” No source is provided, and this is contrary to the most popular view of personal identity, that being that our identity at any given time is constituted by our psychological contents, conscious and unconscious. Harris strawmans contrary views on identity by claiming that if we are more than our consciousness, that being one part of our psychological contents, we must be our whole body, taking responsibility for things like the E. coli inside of us. This is simply not true, and again, ignores the common view.

Harris concludes by claiming compatibilists solve the problem of free will by ignoring it. This is truly hilarious and has a great irony, since throughout the first 25 pages of his book, Harris tiptoes around compatibilist views, strawmans them, and brushes them off as impossible or incoherent.

Taking the topic to moral responsibility, Harris claims that since we are not responsible for what we think, and if what we think causes us to do what we do, we are not responsible. Frankfurt objects to this by claiming that we are responsible so long as we want to do what we do, and we didn’t want our will to be different. This seems to satisfactorily account for being morally responsible, and appears more plausible than Harris’ claim.

On page 38, Harris claims, “many people believe that human freedom consists in our ability to do what, upon reflection, we believe we should do.” This appears contrary to the idea he espoused earlier, that most people believe freedom to consist in being the author of our own thoughts. Neither of these empirical claims have sources and together are clearly contradictory.

Harris touches on the infinite regress of choice, claiming that we don’t make choices, as when we seemingly make a choice, the choice to make that choice is beyond our control, as is the choice to make the choice to make that choice, ad infinitum. However, so long as one acts on their first-order desire, that being, they do what they want, and their first order desire is not contrary to their second-order desire, it is unclear what makes them not responsible. In what sense did they not choose? Sure, the choice may have been causally determined, but it was determined with respect to who they are, to their will. Why is this not satisfactory? Harris provides no rebuttal.

Harris claims that it is paramount that we know where our desires come from, but it is unclear why. He provides no evidence in support of needing to cope with this challenge, and ignores any theories that show it to be an unnecessary requirement.

Harris claims that responsibility is not reliant on free will, and says “to say that I was responsible for my behaviour is simply to say that what I did was sufficiently in keeping with my thoughts, intentions, beliefs, and desires to be considered an extension of them.” This appears to be in essence, Frankfurt’s view on moral responsibility. Harris seems to have created a tautological definition of free will and then, in order to preserve institutions of responsibility, relied on a compatibilist definition of free will in disguise to provide criteria for being responsible. Harris goes on to elaborate on this slightly more, but the fact remains that he dodges defining free will as it typically is, and then adopts the common definition to retain the idea of responsibility, as otherwise his theory would seem intuitively wrong.

I am not sure any sort of formal conclusion is needed. It is painfully obvious to an observant eye that Harris is intellectually dishonest throughout his book. He turns a blind eye to the philosophical traditions when it suits his argument, and then attempts to re-adopt ideas when it is to his benefit. This book does not deserve even the slightest serious consideration in the realm of philosophical literature, and my rebuking it was simply done in an attempt to strengthen my own critical thinking faculties. I do not recommend reading this book, and if you are interested in the concept of free will, I would recommend you start with a reputable source such as the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, and branch out from the sources indicated there.