I get the impression Graham Preston is over reacting to a philosophical discussion he doesn't quite fathom, and/or perhaps the topic is pushing a raw nerve for Graham. It also appears most of his objection was 'determined' by page 29. His mind was made up for the rest of the book which must have at least 62 pages, going by Graham's references.

Personally I'm of two minds and I feel it may be possible to have both determination and free will operating at the same time. Similar in a way a photon behaves as both a particle and a wave. Everything requires a witness in order to occur. Who is ultimately the witness? Is there a cosmic ocean of consciousness that is ever present and aware?

Without having read the book its hard to know what depth the author got into the subject, especially in the area of quantum physics. But in the article Graham quotes from the book: "The next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience did not bring into being."

Ancient Vedic knowledge discusses the existence of Atma, our true Self, witnessing our limited sense of self go through our daily dramas. Knowing the Self is to see the whole universe and indeed all that there is from a oneness with it all perspective. This is essentially the state of Enlightenment, Nirvana, or even Christ Consciousness.

If the past, present and future are in fact happening simultaneously, as some suggest, then determinism is not completely farfetched. After all, at any given moment you are where you are, doing what you are doing, thinking what you think as a result of the sum total of every single thing that you've done in your life previously. Change one minute event in the past and everything else changes that follows.

And we haven't even started to included multiple universes and planes of existence.

JP, what is "meaning"?

Bugger, wasted a post.

thinkabit, I'm afraid you don't understand QM. There is nothing non-deterministic about it, it is just that the scale makes it hard for us to observe the transactions between the particles or other components of the quantum system that determine what happens.

Moreover, we are very coarse observers, for the most part and we have a tendency to interact strongly with the systems we observe, "collapsing" them into states which we call "real". We are slowly learning how to interact less strongly and with such "weak" measurements of quantum systems we are coming to realise that Heisenberg's ideas were as limited in their own way as Newton's were.

Well Harris could have been channeling a higher entity? Or maybe he just smoked to much dope?

I prefer the Ghost in the machine theory; and a future not yet determined, but rather as a very malleable plastic shadow of what might be, thanks to the decisions we make regarding it, and what we might settle for instead.

Interestingly, Quantum Mechanics seems to postulate that if we can get enough people to believe something is real or has happened, then it will manifest as our future!?

The power of belief!

And that same power apparently allows some of us who have mastered the concept, to reportedly walk on glowing embers, without burning our feet?

Or die within days, by dint of having a bone pointed at us?

That being so, could we just stop believing in war as inevitable, or that some of us have to live in dire poverty and disadvantage; or even enduring penury.

I just need a circle of like minded thinkers, it would seem, to be able to change the world for the better.

Many minds working for the same end, can create it, if empowered with implacable belief, so saith quantum mechanics?

We also need to focus exclusively on those outcomes we want, rather than those we fear might happen!

We need to listen to guys who cured themselves of incurable cancer etc, and just by focusing their minds on that repeatedly visualized outcome!

Not all efficacious medicine comes in a bottle or from a doctor's hands.

I mean, how often does what we fear might happen, happen, almost as if our very fear bid it to manifest!?

And really, we really do need to spend some time focusing on our own happiness, given that almost guarantees we have made at lest one person happy!

And we don't need to take anything from anybody else to achieve that!
Rhrosty.

When Sam Harris claims that "you are not in control of your mind", maybe he is correct, maybe not, but in any case he is more profound than the author is willing to admit.

YOU may or may not be in control of your mind - while most agree that you receive some input from the mind, the question whether you can also output and influence it remains open. Alternately, even that which you experience as "will" and "desires" could merely be another form of input from the mind, akin to sensory input over which you have no influence.

The author on the other hand, misses the whole point by asking whether humans are free or whether humans have a non-physical element. His question, "So why do people like Harris deny human free?" is completely off the mark, indicating that he completely misunderstood Harris. The author believes that "denying human free will flies in the face of life as we know it", yet we never actually experience "human free will" - we only experience that WE have a will.

It is most likely that humans are not free but just mechanistic/deterministic animals. It is also likely that the mind is nothing but a function of the human brain, hence it isn't free either. However, even if our mind is completely deterministic and uninfluencable, we still have the freedom whether to associate with it, whether to identify with it, whether to listen to it, whether to have anything to do with it.

In other words, even if the mind is determined to commit a murder and we cannot stop it, we still have the option of disassociating from it: the murder would still be committed, but we would then not be the murderers nor would we suffer the inevitable punishment for that murder.

Craig Minns: normally I avoid any talk about quantum mechanics mainly because there are a lot of people out there who have read some pop-culture science/philosophy book and they think they know all about it when in fact they have don't have a sufficient backgrounding in mathematics and physics to be able to talk about it nor understand it. (eg: a perfect example is Rhrosty on this forum, it is obvious that he doesn't have much of a clue)

However, the wording you've used in your post shows that you may have a deeper understanding than most. So I'm curious: you've actually studied maths and physics at uni and are qualified to comment? To me it appears that you are.

Now, when I was at uni (over 20 years ago) I did some of QM physics. I was taught that the most common interpretation of the wave equation was the Copenhagen Interpretation. A specific part of this interpretation is that wave function fully represents the state of the system. Any measurement results in the wave collapsing, where the state that it collapses to is randomly determined with the probability distribution given by the wave's modulus squared. Although I'm aware there are many other interpretations such as pilot-wave (which is deterministic), many world, conscious causes collapse, etc..

So are you saying that this is no longer the consensus thinking? If so, then what is the current thinking?

Incase you're wondering: what do I know about physics? Well I have a solid understanding of physics up to the 1930's
ie: For classical physics my knowledge is very solid- Newtonian and its reformulations of Langrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, Maxwell's equations, classical thermo, etc.
For modern physics my knowledge runs upto the early 1930's - eg., special relativity and some general relativity-- although my knowledge of tensors is not enough to do much general relativity. Also I know some QM: Specifically, Schrondinger's wave equation. I'm aware of the other formulations such as Heisenberg's matrix mechanics and Freynman's path intergals, although never studied them in depth.