Consequences of the Lament

In response to Reflections on Free Will, by Daniel C. Danett, Sam Haris wrote The Marionette's Lament. In this Sam refutes with the criticism of Daniel about his book Free Will. In the beginning Sam is quite vociferously reactive of the style and tone of Daniel's criticism. In particular Sam finds the reflections of Daniel quite sneering. This may not have been the case with an ordinary reader whose native language is specially not English. In reality, an ordinary reader may have been unglued by a lot of intricacies of the subject as soon as he/she may have started reading the reflections. For instance, on one occasion Daniel describes the reflections as a museum of mistakes. An ordinary reader may not have noticed it as sarcasm or ridicule. Sam did! And responded quite vociferously to it. The fact is that a reader whose native language is not English might have found it quite difficult to appreciate this and other such comments specially because of lack of familiarity with the sense of sarcasm used in the English language or English cultures. A museum is just a museum at the end of the day. And there are so many museums around the world. So why make so much of a big deal about a museum of mistakes, which is just another museum. Isn't it? Oops! I have started to sound like Al-Capone!

After addressing Daniels reflections Sam goes on to explain his own conception of free will. This is done specially nicely when he tries to change the topic in his section "changing the topic". Otherwise, at least I would still have been baffled about the notion of free will he is trying to project. Free will is free will at the end of the day and we all have it. Some of us use our free will in one way or the other depending on how we wish to choose. (More Al-Capone!)

Sam's vantage point becomes specially clear when he distinguishes between first person and third person experiences or influences that shape the personality of a person. For instance, according to what a common person may understand about his notion of free will can be explained with the help of the following example. 

Consider a person who has chosen to become a cobbler. He chooses to become a cobbler because he thinks that it is a benign man's profession. A man can mend shoes and also be safe from many a distractions and dangers in his daily life. All he needs to do is to learn to sew and stitch the shoes well. He hones his motor skills to suit for speedy stitching. This way he gets better and better at making/mending shoes and becomes better and wealthier day by day. Doing so he also evades many chances of getting involved in unnecessary conflicts he would have been involved in otherwise. Had he been a truck driver, he might have been dead already in a road accident. Had he chosen a more sociable profession, such as that of a car mechanic, for instance, he may already have been badly injured due to a dispute with a client or burnt due to exposure to radiator overheating. As a cobbler all he needs to do is to find a solitary corner, sit there and hone his skill to stitch shoes and not his own hands. Pretty safe!

Common man, or folk, would obviously think that the cobbler made some really nice decisions in his life and became what he became, a successful cobbler. Does not the cobbler then have free will? To the common man, he really has that. He thought about a career choice at some stage of his life. Then he took a step to starting working on that. And as he started working he also learnt to have better self control and added to that, better motor skills due to which he can stitch more shoes in a given span of time that he would not have done otherwise.

Sam argues that this is really the illusion of free will the common man, or folk, suffer from. Daniel comes along to agree with the folk for their respite. According to Sam's framework of free will, however, the cobbler exactly does not have that freedom. Sam would argue that the circumstances, that shaped the cobbler to become a cobbler, have/had been governing his decisions throughout. The external environmental threats and influences forced him to become a cobbler. For instance, the cobbler may have feared at some stage of his life that taking up a more sociable profession was hazardous for him in some sense. His yearning for personal security urged him to take a professional choice he would not have taken otherwise. What if the cobbler had wanted to become a news editor instead but was too shy to have become that.

Sam would also argue that the cobbler's yearning for becoming something other (a mechanic, a driver, or a news editor) than what he actually became (a cobbler) also does not show in any way that the person had any free will. All his desires emerged from circumstances and influences that were out of his control. To this end, Sam indeed does have a point and he also takes us out of the misery of endlessly wondering about the real point of his argument.

How does then Sam's theory of free will cope up with the cobbler's acquiring better motor skills. His decision to learn to become a better stitcher can be ruled out using the same reasoning as above to show that free will is an illusion. The fact that he somehow acquired motor skills can also be ruled out same way. It is just a part of his decision to learn better shoe stitching and since he made that decision under the influence of external factors (factors emerging from events happening in systems other than his self), he simply does not have free will. However, how about his experience of dextrous stitching. The experience one can observe fast, near perfect mechanism of stitching shoes, with almost no flaws. How does one account for this fast stitching process as one observes it as what Sam calls a moment by moment experience of life? Sam would argue that this also suggests that the cobbler does not have free will. 

The robot-like skills that the cobbler has acquired through years of hard work and practice also suffers from third person influences. Actually, as any experience does, it may as well suffer from bunch of external influences. 

Grave Consequences: By suggesting that people do not have free will what Sam intend's to show is that people cannot be held responsible for their actions. Here, Sam's intention can sound both innocent and astute at the same time. Does not it make sense to say that since people are not the ultimate designers of their decisions and actions, it is irrelevant to hold them responsible for what they do.

Actually Sam has a deeper point when he suggests this. In a meaningful sense, he wants to liberate people from many things, such as a sense of guilt and sin and to free them out of prisons when they have been considered wrong and morally defunct by the society and the judiciary. This is done by saying that since people do not be held responsible for their actions it is absolutely irrelevant to hold them responsible for what they have done. In some sense this is what it means.

It is, however, not understandable at this point that how Sam actually thinks or would propose a newer judicial system to look like. A person who has murdered now is considered a murdered presently and accordingly he is sent to jail. If Sam's framework became applicable at some stage, how would that take into account this aspect and the associated repercussions at some latter stage.

A Deeper Point: I thought about Sam's work for quite a while. I have been reading him for quite a few years now and I know that he is an atheist. Indeed, as it appears from his writings, it is one of the life goals of Sam Harris to systematically argue against religion and hence existence of God. I seriously hope and pray that that would change at some stage of his life. But this is not the point I am trying to make, it is just a comment. So, as Sam is an atheist, one can wonder that how would Sam argue about an act of, let us say, terrorism (a bombing or whatever, we know of many such things) committed by someone. In particular how would Sam argue about the action of the person in light of his framework of free will? This is a very cogent question indeed. If a person does not have free will and he has committed a heinous crime such as creating a huge bombing event, how would Sam propose a justification of that or of his conception of free will. I propose, that Sam would propose, that that person, like all the other people, also did not have any free will. The person did that under the influence of things that have influenced him over his lifetime. More explicitly Sam would argue that it is not the person who should be held responsible for his action. Instead, it is the religious teachings he had had during his lifetime that should be attributed responsibility to. In short, Sam would argue against the religion instead of the person. This point would have far reaching consequences specially if his theory of free will is to be taken seriously. Allah Karim!

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  by  BrynJ 

A Reflection on Reflections

I managed to read the "Reflections on Free Will" by Daniel C. Dannett twice. This is a review of the book of Sam Harris named Free Will. I read the book twice due to the concern that I may have missed the point. Keeping in mind to not to miss the point is very essential in my point of view specially concerning this type of philosophical work. There are at least three cogent reasons for keeping in mind that the point not be missed. 1) This is a very delicate topic. On a superficial level it may sound artistic and, thus, easy to comprehend, but in reality it demands a lot of attention. 2) Sam Harris is a very elegant writer. There is no doubt about that. In as much as there might be a lot of his critics, I am sured he is admired by many due to his way of writing and the way he translates his thought process on paper (or a computer based book or blog for that matter). I also admire his writing its style and content. He poses very cogent questions at times. But there is one thing about Sam Harris's writing style that at times it appears that he swings his whole argument. He moves his discourse in a sort of a spiral and comes back to square one. One may really wonder at that instant on as to what is his point. That is why I believe that it is very important to re-read and to try to fully understand what he has really written and implied. Pun not intended! 3) Sometimes we can be shallow readers. Our not too good reading comprehensions, short attention spans, lack of focus, time varying interest, and dwindling energy can actually play a role in us missing the whole point altogether in an otherwise such an engaging and lengthy discourse. 

However, reflections has been written by Daniel C. Dennett and not by Sam Harris. And this one is actually not very confusing. In reality it really demystifies many of the conceptual caveats one may have about the subject of Free Will (while possibly creating others in the form of various esoteric thought experiments or whatever). So the point number 2 (among the 3) listed in the above paragraph might not really hold true in this case. However, since reflections on free will is actually a reflection of the work of Sam Harris, point 2 might begin to hold true to some extent for this book as well.

So what is reflections really all about. Reflections refutes the argument of Sam Harris that free will is an illusion. What Daniel argues about is that we human beings really have free will. This is the whole idea of this book. However, I was interested in understanding the subject in a bit more detail and on a deeper level. I was interested in understanding if there is something really deep about the subject of free will. And indeed there are a few really deep things about the subject of free will. I shall point out three things here that I came across in the book for the purpose of brevity. The real purpose in writing this (sort of a) summary is to create a stub about the subject so that I can revisit it latter at some stage for my own perusal, at least. In what follows, I am trying to write my concerns from memory. The reason for this is that I am already trying trying to struggle with other distractions as I am writing this.

The first thing I have noticed and I find worth commenting and contemplating about has something to do with the mention of immaterial souls. In the start of reflections, Daniel tries to defend the position of Sam Harris by somewhat suggesting that when he asserts that human do not have free will, his theory applies to our immaterial souls. And since we do not have immaterial souls (and since we are just lumps of biochemicals), the theory does not apply to us. This is what I have inferred at least. I admit that I could be wrong. My understanding could be flawed. Specially since I am writing this from memory and I do not have the draft of reflections opened in front of me. My concern is that irrespective of the fact that we have immaterial souls or not, what would be the repercussions of applying a similar scrutiny that whether we have free will or not if we actually had immaterial souls.

The second aspect about the book is the spectrum of various positions we can assume between free will and determinism. I have still not really understood the deep meanings of various positions such as combatilism, incombatilism etc. I do understand that combatilism implies that determinism and free will are compatible; both of them can exist (I wonder if exist is the right word) at the same time. Incombatilism is the converse. It means if free will can happen, determinism is false and vice versa. The problem is that it is really important to deeply understand these notions.

The third is the understanding of free will. The position Sam assumes is that free will is an illusion. That I have decided to read about free will. That I may have wondered at some stage on as to what it really means to have free will. That I eventually managed to find some thinkable reading material on it. Eventually I am writing about free will now. According to Sam's framework, I was not really free in choosing to come up to this point. According to Sam, there must have happened events in my life that were beyond my control that may have urged, motivated or influenced me to do all of this. For instance, I may have been impressed by philosophy at some stage. And at some stage prior to that I may have been told that philosophy was an enterprise worth getting impressed about. Daniel has argued that this does not imply that we do not have free will.

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  by  Tomas Sobek 

Clash of Civilizations

Clash of civilizations has been on my reading list for a very long time. Fortunately, I managed to find a copy of its Urdu translation in my own house. Ideally I would have loved to read the English version. However, as soon as I found the book (in Urdu) I found it so much enticing that I did not really care whether it was in English or whatever. I hope that the translation does not violate any copyright laws. Otherwise it could give rise to a new dimension to this "clash of civilizations". The translation of the book has been published by a gazetted publisher, namely, Nigaarshaat Publishers, Lahore. It is written on the relevant page that the publisher owns the copyrights of the book. The author of the book is Samuel P. Huntington. The name of the Urdu translator is Abdul-Majeed Tahir.

So what is clash of civilizations really all about? Clash of civilizations is a theory about international conflict that is supposed to shape the political and social dynamics of the post cold war world. To this end, in as much as the book must have been a geopolitical prophecy at the time of its writing, it possibly represents the era we are living in right now. Or it might be alright to say that either we are living in the post- clash of civilizations era or that we are briskly headed to it. 

So what is the theory of clash of civilizations all about? The theory of clash of civilizations colors and classifies the human world according to cultural and civilizational distances. It looks at and further draws boundaries between groups of people through various vantage points. However the main markers or factors that are used to bind a group of people together and to draw boundaries between other groups are social in nature.

The author goes in great details in describing the nature of Western civilization. West, according to the author, is composed of Europe, North America and Latin America. Whatever is left is termed as the rest according to the author. The author further proposes that the clas of civilizations can also be supposed to be a clash between the West and the rest. 

The other major civilizations that are figured out by the author are the Muslim, eastern Asian and Subcontinental Indian civilizations. Eastern civilization according to him is led by China, under the influence of Confucianism and also contains other cultures such as Japanese and Taiwanese. The author also talks about Russian as an actor playing under the influence of Orthodox Christianity.

The author also talks about the tilt in balance of power between various civilizations. According to the author it appears that the West is loosing, or would loose, the power and superiority of its civilizational doctrine rapidly. This shift of balance appears to be more favorable particularly for China.

In terms of conflicts it is predicted that on a macro level the conflicts would be between the West and the Rest. Whereas on a micro level conflicts would happen between Islam and the rest. The author also talks about other factors related to inter-civilizational conflicts such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and arms race. The author also suggests remedies and precautions that could sway, abate or dissuade the risks of conflicts. 

Obviously the book is more detailed than this small summary. It is indeed worth reading the book. It is particularly quite appropriate for the times we live in. 

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  by  T-Hino 

A Hospitable Hospital

Last year I was in Copenhagen. On one odd Sunday I had an unprecedented attack of asthma. I left my apartment early in the morning and went out looking for a hospital. Eventually I ended up in Ritz hospital while the asthma was on. I was sent off to the intensive care unit where a nurse immediately applied all the paraphernalia on me that was required to abate the intensity of the attack.  For instance, the nurse fixed an oxygen mask on my mouth and checked other things such as the blood pressure, and so on.

After that I was moved to Hvidovre hospital in an ambulance. This hospital is also located in Copenhagen. There I was given a room and a bed to sleep in. Adequate care was also taken about my illness. I lived there for around a couple of days (or nights). The doctors gave me appropriate inhalers and noted down my medical history properly. I was also given nice food. As a matter of fact, I remember, that on one occasion when a food menu was given to me, I inquired whether the meat was halal or not. I was assured that all the meet that was cooked in the hospital was halal keeping in view that the hospital was frequented by Muslims. I found it quite impressive.

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I stayed there for a couple of days and that time was quite relaxing. Similarly, a few months prior to that I also had a chance to spend a couple of nights in the same hospital (i.e. Hvidovre hospital). The reason was that a friend of mine was sick. He also had asthma. We went to the RedCross first. They have an office close the HovedBaneGarden (the central railway station of Copenhagen). The personnel at RedCross are also very friendly and extremely vigilant about the random patients that come to them. They sent us off to Hvidovre Hospital seeing the emergency of the poor plight of my friend. 

My friend was admitted immediately in the hospital. I remember that a funny doctor came in to see him. He had a complete look at his condition. He then weaved his hands in the air and told him, "I will not let you die tonight." To sum it up, he was also taken care of very well. I also stayed in the hospital with my friend. It is also worth mentioning that all of this nice treatment was given both of the times free of charge. This is to say that we were not charged any penny. And I believe that this is important to acknowledge.

Other people in the hospital were also very nice and humane. I am particularly very impressed by the egalitarianism of Europe in general. This was exhibited to a great extent by the staff of Hvidovre hospital and the RedCross. I hope that the vast majority of our country would also adopt this kind of service oriented attitude. I deferred writing about this for a long time. However, I believe that this is quite important to acknowledge such events and gestures in a reasonable manner.

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  by  t_scholz 

Does Willpower Exist

Almost for the past one month I have been thinking about writing about willpower. The idea may sound trivial to the casual reader. However, it is interestingly not so. Why am I interesting in writing about this curiously has a very cogent reason. That is that while we are not so sure about whether we possess free will or not, how can we assume that possess willpower.

Quite interestingly my curiosity has coincided with the recent publication of Daniel C. Dennetts Reflections on Free Will. Sam Harris recently wrote a book titled Free Will. In response to that Daniel wrote a possible rebuttal to that. I have not been able to read Free Will possibly due to shortage of time and lack of access to a decent library that would host such books. I am sure it must be a very interesting book. On the other hand Daniel's rebuttal also sounds promising. In Sam's own words the rebuttal itself is as long as the book. 

Luckily I have been able to give it an initial eye-ball, something that I could possibly only do given my tough routine over the past few weeks. Daniel has some very interesting reflections on Sam's notions of free will. I could not comprehend everything, but one definitely gets a good deal of an idea even through casual reading. It is interesting to note that both Sam and Daniel hold interestingly opposing positions on existence of free will. While Sam argues that we as humans do not have free will, Daniel proposes the converse. However, the argument is not that simple. It becomes quite obfuscated specially when we involve compatiblist and incompatiblist theories into account. It is true about me at least that I find a lot of things difficult to comprehend. It might not be true for many other readers (or students). However, I presume that a more focused reading may help in alleviating my problem of understanding the whole gamut of "free-will" "no-free-will" theories. 

Assuming this knowledge of free will as a basis one may pose another interesting question: Does willpower exist? Often we hear success stories about ordinary people who dealt with extra-ordinary situations and came out as victorious. We tend to say that so and so person has tremendous willpower simply because he/she struggled very hard against so many unprecedented and unfavorable circumstances and eventually came out as victorious.

Mountaineers climb high mountains. In the due course they fall off high and rocky cliffs. They get emotionally shattered and physically crippled. However, they do not give up on their ambition to climb. Is this determination and audacity an exhibition of willpower?

I stopped blogging almost a month ago due to other important chores that I was supposed to undertake. As I stopped blogging I made a vow to myself that I would think about a few ideas about writing and come back and write with more zeal and passion as soon as I got a new idea. The very fact that I have somehow managed to come back and written off this article, is this suggestive that I possess some level of willpower in some  meaningful sense? 

In order to understand this we would initially have to understand what willpower simply means. In its simplest interpretation willpower can mean the ability to execute one's will. To this end, one should have the ability to have will or to will, irrespective of how a philosopher may believe that it is suitable for us to have it or not. Anyhow, if we agree with Sam Harris that we do not have free will at all, how can we have willpower? 

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  by  joiseyshowaa