On page 37 of Sam Harris's book, Free Will, he wrote, "You are not in control of your mind..."

If determinism is true, then he is correct - no one has any control over their minds. Everything that we think, say and do does not come from "us" but is just the product of the previous state of the physical world.

So if Harris is to be consistent he would have to acknowledge that he has no control of what he has written in his book. It just so "happens" that the words formed into sentences that are syntactically correct and sort of make sense.

If determinism is true we are all essentially uncontrolled, noise-making puppets with our strings pulled mindlessly by the physical universe.

Harris’s thesis of determinism being true is self-defeating. If one asserts that there are valid, comprehensible reasons for believing that determinism is true, as Harris does, then in doing so he shows that determinism must necessarily be false.

Resorting to "compatibilism" doesn't help either.It is only if we do have libertarian free will, where we could actually have done something other than what we did, that life makes any sense.

The reality is that we all live with free will as a reality. We do largely have control of our minds and that is why we can meaningfully hold each accountable for our behaviour.

«The reality is that we all live with free will as a reality»

The reality is that we all EXPERIENCE free will as a reality.

- This much we can affirm without hesitation.

We can likewise affirm without hesitation that we all SEE the sun rising and setting, but we cannot similarly affirm that the sun is in fact rising and setting: despite what we undeniably see, we know that it is the earth which rotates around itself which creates that impression.

It is, nevertheless, still very practical to live AS IF we had free will, just as it is very practical to live as if the sun will rise next morning and set next evening:

It is still true that if we choose wisely and treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves, then we will enjoy a pleasant and fulfilling life (and afterlife too, but we need not go into that now), while if we choose poorly and hurt others instead then we will suffer a miserable life (and afterlife as well). These observations do not depend on whether or not our will is free as it seems.

«On page 37 of Sam Harris' book, Free Will, he wrote, "You are not in control of your mind..."»

To even begin to assess Harris' statement, one first needs to know what Harris meant by the word "You", which can have at least 9 different and incompatible meanings.

I don’t agree Yuyutsu.

You say it is practical to live AS IF we have free will. To say that implies that we have control over how we live but if we don’t actually have free will then we have no control over how we live at all.

In the same way, we can only “choose wisely” (or choose foolishly) if we have a will that enables to genuinely choose between options. If determinism is true then things just “happen” and we have no control over anything.

As I pointed out above, arguing that determinism is true is logically self-defeating

Dear JP,

I do not believe in material determinism - the kind of determinism I believe in, is that all without exception is by God's will, including man's subjective sense of free will. I believe that things do not "just happen" - they happen by God's grace.

Like it or not, humans have no control whatsoever over how they live.
Humans (and animals too) have a will of course, that is an undeniable experience, but that will is not genuinely free like it seems to be, just as the sun does not genuinely rise and set.

Note carefully that I never said that you are a human (you are not!), but to the extent you believe yourself to be a human, it follows that this "you" has no control.

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Dear Peter (the author),

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You ask :

« Do we have free will ? »

I don’t know about you, Peter, but I do.

It’s kind of fun – even though it sometimes gets me into trouble !

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Hello Yuyutsu - If everything that happens is due entirely to God’s will and humans have no control whatsoever over how they live, then this discussion, indeed everything is entirely pointless.

What Peter Bowden wrote, what you wrote, and what I wrote, is all caused by God. It seems that God is just talking to himself via human beings.

Perhaps “you” will now reply to this – no, you will certainly reply if God causes you to reply and you certainly won’t if he doesn’t. And if God causes you to reply you will write exactly what God causes you to write and . . . on and on it goes.

It is all a meaningless exercise, if you are correct.