We continue considering that Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne deny free will: find the entire series here.
Note Sam Harris’ (literally) birdbrained statement:
Of course, many scientists…For instance, the biologist Martin Heisenberg has observed that some fundamental processes in the brain, like the opening and closing of ion channels and the release of synaptic vesicles, occur at random, and cannot, therefore, be determined by environmental stimuli.
Thus, much of our behavior can be considered “self-generated,” and therein, he imagines, lies a basis for free will. But “self-generated” in this sense means only that these events originate in the brain. The same can be said for the brain states of a chicken.
Well, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest…or, make that two as Richard Dawkins also compared the human brain that can compute 20 million billion calculations per second to bird’s brains (see Altruism or Allfalseism) as he compares human altruism to a bird mistakenly feeding a chick which is not its own.
In any regard, the issue is that one scientist interprets chemical reactions one way and another interprets it another way. But Harris verified the point we have been making which is that all his supposed evidence only amounts to “that these events originate in the brain”—period.
Sam Harris writes that “‘self-generated’ mental events would amount to utter madness” because:
Imagine what your life would be like if all your actions, intentions, beliefs, and desires were “self-generated”…You would live as one blown about by an internal wind. Actions, intentions, beliefs, and desires can only exist in a system that is significantly constrained by patterns of behavior and the laws of stimulus-response. This may, perhaps, touch upon the different between what we may call our free willed reasoned thoughts on the one hand and our instinctive reactions on the other. When we touch something dangerously hot we do not, at least appear to, go through a thought process of examining the sensation, concluding that it could result in physical damage, determining that such damage is deleterious and finally decide to act in a manner which results in pulling away from the source of heat. No, rather we instantly recoil “without thinking about it.” And although this is our experience all along there is a part of us that does ponder such things even if not at that moment.
But, in any regard the rapidity of our reflexes should not be absolutised to the point of “thinking” that we are 100% instinct (or, thermodynamics) driven beings. On the other hand, that we make free will choices should not be absolutised to the point that we cannot recognize reflex based instincts. We should recognize that we are, perhaps, a dichotomy, a duality and that the results of a reasoned series of thoughts are not of the same sort, kind, type or category as a reflex.
Now, to another Harrisian Atheist worldview based fallacious correlation:
Even if our brains were quantum computers, the brains of chimps, dogs, and mice would be quantum computers as well. (I don’t know of anyone who believes that these animals have free will.)…But most neuroscientists do not view the brain as a quantum computer. Again, even if we knew that human consciousness depended upon quantum processes, it is pure hand-waving to suggest that quantum indeterminacy renders the concept of free will scientifically intelligible. Human, chimps, dogs, mice, birds, it’s all the same to an Atheist, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy”—Ingrid Newkirk (of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals-PETA). From his Darwinist view it is all the same and yet, perhaps animals do have free will. If they do not, it does not mean that we humans do not.
Actually, the one thing that definitely separates us from the animals is fashion faux pas.
Succinctly, his point is that “Even if our brains were quantum computers…quantum effects are unlikely to be biologically salient…it is pure hand-waving to suggest that quantum indeterminacy renders the concept of free will scientifically intelligible.”
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