From 2002 until the pandemic, several of my kids and I would go to New York the day after Christmas to shop along Broadway. Usually we drove to either Trenton or Secaucus from Lancaster, parked the car, and took New Jersey Transit trains to NYC.
We would talk about almost anything on the drives up and back. On one of the drives when my younger daughter Lisa was in grad school, so 2013 or after, it was just Nigel, Lisa and I in the car. Nigel fell asleep in the back seat.
Lisa and I started what became a two-hour plus discussion of free will--does it it exist?
At the time, Lisa had come to believe in Determinism. That school of thought says free will is an illusion. We act as nature and nurture has programmed us. The appearance of free will can always be explained by brain activity and environment.
I believe that all people have free will, but most people choose to use it rarely or never. Many wish they did not have free will and want someone else to make the tough decisions in their lives.
Last week, I was in the English section of a Swiss bookstore and saw Sam Harris' book "Free Will." I meant to read this after Lisa and I discussed Determinism. (Was the decade delay a free will choice on my part, or because I had a job and kids living at home at the time, simply something I forgot--determined by my environment?)
Even though it is a decade later and Lisa has a different view of free will now, I decided to buy the book and read it on the flight from Geneva to Riga, Latvia. The book is well written and I am unconvinced. Another book titled "Free Will" takes the position that we have free will but use it rarely. That is my position. I wrote about that book here. It's very good on parsing Fate, Chance, Free Will and Determinism.
I may choose to re-read Mark Balguer's book "Free Will" later this year. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. As for Sam Harris' book on the same topic, I will leave it in an airport or train station for someone else. It is very well written. And that makes me reject the premise all the more.
Every sentence I write involves choosing the right words in the right order. Sometimes I surprise myself with a choice of words that seems perfect for expressing and idea. Sometimes I re-read something I wrote and think I should never attempt to write again. Most of writing is determined by decades of experience and training and intuition. But once in a while I have to choose among very different possibilities and in that moment, I have Free Will.
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