Sam Harris writes about free will. Oh goody.

Note: This is not a review of Sam Harris's newest book, Free Will, which I haven't yet read. It is, rather, an account of why I dread having to read it.

After completing his PhD in neuroscience, Sam Harris--a former undergraduate philosophy major and my least favorite new atheist--has, it seems, chosen to continue his career as an unusually prolific and influential undergraduate philosopher.

I say "continue" because his first major book, The End of Faith (and its follow up "Letter to a Christian Nation"), tackled a core topic in the philosophy of religion--"What is faith, and is it a virtue?"--and his second major book, The Moral Landscape, tackled a core topic in moral philosophy: "Is there an objective standard for morality, and if so what is it?" Now, in his newest book, Harris turns to the perennial philosophical question of whether human beings possess free will.

This is a question I struggle with. I struggle with understanding the concept of free will (What do we mean by "free will," and under what conditions could we be said to have it?) and with the range of formidable arguments for divergent positions on the issue. When I read new theoretic accounts/defenses of free will (such as Stewart Goetz's admirable effort in Freedom, Teleology, and Evil), I do so as something of a hopeful skeptic. I'm looking for an understanding of freedom according to which it can be shown to operate as a coherent third alternative to (a) being determined to act by prior causes or by the weight of reasons for action, and (b) acting simply at random or arbitrarily. But I have not yet found such an account (my reasons for remaining unconvinced by Goetz appear in my Religious Studies review of his book). At the same time, I live my life as a practical believer in the reality of such a third alternative, because I don't know how to make sense of my experience as an agent--especially as a moral agent--in other terms.

In short, this topic interests me both as a human being and as a philosopher. So what can we expect from Harris's new book?

In his previous books, Harris demonstrated great eloquence and even greater confidence in the correctness of his own views, while largely failing to do what philosophers are trained to do in graduate school--namely (a) display an understanding and appreciation of the relevant philosophical literature and (b) carefully develop one's position in conversation with the best arguments one has found for opposing views. In short, they were books on philosophical topics written by someone with only an undergraduate philosophy degree...and they read like books on philosophical topics written by someone with only an undergraduate philosophy degree (albeit someone with a sharp intellect and talent as a writer).

Now it's clear from recent comments that not every reader of this blog will regard Harris's propensity to ignore what professional philosophers have had to say on these topics (especially those with opposing views) as a vice. But since I do, my expectations of this new book aren't all that high.

I don't expect Harris to lay out the range of possible nuanced views on free will clearly and completely and then locate his own position within this range. I don't expect him to faithfully engage with the best arguments for views different from his own, comparing the relative strengths of the arguments for these alternatives. I don't expect him to have gone through the literature to determine whether the arguments he develops have already been made, nor whether they have already been criticized...and if so to engage with those criticisms. I don't expect him to anticipate objections to his arguments that haven't yet been made by others, to develop those challenges as powerfully as he can and then respond to them.

I do expect him to display supreme confidence, despite his failure to do any of these things, that his own position is correct.

In other words, I expect the book to be very annoying.

Nevertheless I'll likely read it for the following reasons: First, I hope that his writing abilities will enable him to present his newly acquired knowledge of neuroscience in a manner conducive to deepening my understanding of this topic. Second, I expect that he will present an energetic argument from these neuroscientific starting points, one that might possibly introduce something new to the traditional philosophical arguments against free will. Third, the book is short, and so the investment of time isn't great. Fourth, it's likely to be far more widely read--and hence far more likely to shape popular thinking about this philosophical topic, including the thinking of my students--than will any of the articles and books on free will written by professional philosophers.

And in the end, I'll need to grudgingly thank Harris for precisely this reason: He'll succeed in generating wider interest in and dialogue about an important philosophical topic in a way that others, with less popular appeal, simply can't hope to do. He will have used his formidable platform to spark deeper philosophical reflection about free will than might otherwise occur. Maybe he'll motivate some readers to dig deeper into the topic, to explore what others have to say.

But that doesn't mean I look forward to reading it.

If anyone has actually read the book already and can disavow me of my grim expectations, I might treat the forthcoming task of reading the book as less onerous--and so might procrastinate less about it. But I'm not put at ease by the recent Scientific American blog review by John Horgan, "Will this Post Make Same Harris Change His Mind About Free Will?" (a blog review which, by the way, makes at least one crucial philosophical mistake that I may address in my next post).