Free Will (* * * * -)
by Sam Harris

This is a favorite topic of mine, and this book is a brief but clear overview of this complex and confusing question: do we have free will?

Sam Harris first explains what we mean by "free will" and what modern neuroscience has to say about it. Even though all scientific evidence questions its existence and shows that deeper mental processes lead to our conscious actions, which in turn are caused by other mental processes or external factors, it is impossible for us to believe that we do not have complete agency. In other words, we all must believe that there is an inner self and an internal "me" that is making all the decisions. So the big question is, what internal mechanism or evolutionary process creates such a grand illusion?

This book is a good introduction to this issue. It also spends time on a related issue—if we do not have agency, can we be blamed for anything we do?

If any of these questions intrigue you, then this is a good place to start.



Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (* * * * *)
Gazzaniga, Michael S.

As you can tell, I am going through a "free will" phase. While Sam Harris' "Free Will" provided a brief, broad introduction, this book delves deeper into how the brain creates the mind. This is essential to form a deeper understanding of the question of free will.

Ultimately, the brain is a decision-making organ, and it drives all our external actions. The brain uses external clues from our sense organs; it reads the state of our body; it is influenced by our past experiences; and it processes all of this to generate the next action. Therefore, it is impossible to think that these factors have nothing to do with our final actions; rather, some internal "me" makes all the decisions. Also, so far, there is no scientific evidence of a specific seat for this "me" in our brain.

Instead, the author describes how our mind is created by many competing, independent brain mechanisms. Yet a part of the brain generates a cohesive story for our conscious mind and hides this subconscious chaos. The mind is viewed as an emergent phenomenon. This process provides the most convincing explanation for why we believe we have free will.

The author also questions the term "free" in free will. Freedom from what? To quote the author: "We don't want to be free from our experience of life; we need that for our decisions. We don't want to be free from our temperament because that also guides our decisions. We actually don't want to be free from causation; we use that for predictions. A receiver trying to catch a football does not want to be free from all the automatic adjustments that his body is making to maintain his speed and trajectory as he dodges tackles. We don't want to be free from our successfully evolved decision-making device." While we pride ourselves on having free will, we actually don't want anyone else to possess it. We want our taxi driver to take us exactly where we want to go, and not where their "free will" might want.

The author also explores free will and responsibility as they relate to law and punishment. This discussion makes it clear that, no matter what science may say about the illusion of free will, as a society, we are far from truly accepting it.



Determined: Life Without Free Will (* * * * *)
Sapolsky, Robert M.

This is not my first book that debates this fundamental and essential question, and it will probably not be the last. I have heard the arguments from both sides. Until a few decades ago, it was tough to argue against what we all feel within ourselves: that we make our own choices and decisions and are, therefore, responsible for all the bad things we do and earn praise for all the good.

There is overwhelming evidence that questions this position, which has only been gathering in the last few decades. It comes from experimental neuroscience, genetic research, physics, and other branches of science. The author has gathered all this evidence in a single narrative, sequentially examined all the arguments for the existence of free will, and dismantled them one by one. His arguments are strong and are not based on philosophical wordplay but on experimental results and logical deductions.

Let's take the example of someone pulling the trigger of a gun. The immediate cause of this is the triggering of the finger muscles. Then one must ask what caused that neuronal signal, and you will eventually reach the motor control section of the brain. Neuron by neuron, we will discover antecedent causes that make a neuron fire. It is a long chain of events—no neuron fires by itself. The causes can be the levels of various chemicals flowing through our body and the brain moments before the event. It could be events that happened a few minutes, hours, or days ago. The action of the neurons can be traced back to one's entire life, childhood, and even in fetal conditions. It does not just stop there. Genetic factors can be inherited, or cultural factors can affect the behavior of neurons in our brains. These millions of variables generate each of our behaviors in incredibly complex ways. As with all complex systems, like the weather, it is not predictable or deterministic, like the movement of planets, but it is still the emergent result of physical laws.

After arguing that there is no free will, he focuses on why we still believe there is. In fact, at a personal level, even the author cannot accept that he should not pay for the evil deeds and get rewarded for all the good things.

Finally, he explores the possibility of a society where we no longer believe in free will and the immediate consequences of that in our criminal justice system and societal reward mechanisms. There is no question that some people will still need to be isolated from the rest of society, but the question is, should it be with a sense of retribution or just safety? We remove a car with a faulty brake from the road, but we don't question the car's moral character. Even if everyone is convinced of the absence of free will, can we really change our deep feelings? Could we ever give up the belief that we should be credited for whatever successes we have achieved?



Departure[s] (* * * * -)
Barnes, Julian

After an astounding writing career, this is Julian Barnes' self-proclaimed last novel. Is it really his last? I hope not. This book hovers somewhere between a novel, memoir, and essays. It tells the story of Stephen and Jean and their two relationships, separated by twenty years. However, the glue that keeps the book together is the author's stream of thought and commentary about getting old and facing mortality.

A few years ago, I read his meditations on mortality in 'Nothing to be Frightened of', and for the first time I felt comfortable with my own aging. Actually, 'comfortable' is not the correct word, as it is impossible to accept one's non-existence. Our subjective universe exists because we exist. But he helped me truly accept that the universe does not care. The universe does what it does, purposeless, amoral, and meaningless. Yet, we feel burdened by the compulsion to find meaning. That is the greatest human tragedy.

In this book, the same thoughts are presented in more intimate settings. They feel more real, as the author is dealing with his wife's death and his own cancer. The author wins out in the end because he does not let age and disease control his sense of humor. He does not allow the illusion of self-importance to dominate his thoughts. He does not do it as a heroic figure, but matter-of-factly.

If you are beyond your youth and your middle age, this is an essential read to properly orient your mind. It is a perfect example of how to talk about death without morbidity. It is a book that may teach you how to take yourself less seriously. But it is also a book about love.



Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (* * * - -)
Dennett, Daniel C.

Those who follow my reading preferences should by now have figured out that I have a bias towards certain types of thinkers. Daniel Dennett is certainly in that small group of people. So far, everything I have read by him has influenced my thinking, and most often I have had to agree with his well-reasoned arguments. This book is the first departure from that pattern.

Written in 1984, more than forty years ago, this was his attempt to argue against the evolving view of most scientists, who started to question the existence of free will. Like most philosophers of that time, he was not ready to give up the notion that we have an inner mechanism that gives us the conscious agency to make our own decisions and, as a consequence, that we are responsible for our good deeds and bad.

Unlike many of his peers, he was not willing to assume any non-material spirit that makes us our free will. His approach was far more rational and scientific. Yet he simply could not let go of the notion, mainly because he felt that accepting a deterministic view of the world would result in terrible nihilism, in which people believing in it would stop doing anything because what is to happen will happen, irrespective of what we want. That, to me, is a strange way to discover truth. The consequences should not affect what is true.

He went wrong on two things. One, he confused "determined" with "predictable". There are innumerable examples of complex behavior in which each step of the process is fully determined, yet long-term predictions are impossible. That is, in such systems, one cannot find a formula in which plugging in a time value yields a future state. One must calculate each next step to determine a future state of the system. Now we know most things in the world behave like that -- weather, economy, biology, and our brain. Every action we take is caused by some neurons firing. However, these neurons fired because other neurons had fired earlier. There is always a prior cause. Nothing happens without a prior cause. These systems are determined, but far from being totally predictable.

Two, he came close to the biggest mystery about free will, but did not take the next step: not whether we have it, but that, no matter what we believe intellectually, we cannot not believe it exists. That is, we all believe we are the masters of our minds. So, the big question is, why did evolution create such a belief system? Even scientists whose life's work is to disprove free will cannot honestly say they don't feel they are the masters of their decisions. There are many thoughts about it, but the common thread is that unless we believe in ultimate agency, the whole system would collapse. We will have no desire to do the right thing or avoid doing wrong. Therefore, as a societal mechanism, a belief in free will is essential.

Now I started reading another book he wrote on the subject, twenty years later. I am eager to know how his thinking evolved.



Freedom Evolves (* * * * -)
Dennett, Daniel C.

There are several views on the issue of Free Will. Let me try to briefly describe these before talking about this book.

Determinism: Claims that everything in the universe, including the choices we make as humans, is always determined by prior events. That does not mean they are necessarily predictable, as complex sets of influences make it impossible to make long-term predictions (like weather). However, it concludes that since all actions have prior causes, free will is an illusion.

Libertarianism: (Nothing to do with the political philosophy with the same name). The position that claims that Free Will is certainly real, and it is completely against the view that human choices are determined.

Compatibilism: They believe that determinism and the existence of free will can coexist. They agree that everything has a prior cause, and yet there can be mechanisms through which we are free to make choices.

Hard Incompatibilism: They claim free will cannot exist irrespective of whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic (random, as in quantum mechanics).

Daniel Dennett wrote Elbow Room in 1984, where he took a position against determinism, claiming free will is real. I found his arguments somewhat unconvincing and wrote about this book earlier. It almost seemed like he was saying that a world where we do not believe in our agency will have terrible societal and moral consequences, and therefore we cannot discard it. We must also keep in mind that neuroscience was in its infancy in the early eighties.

He wrote this book in 2003, almost twenty years later. By then, we knew more about how the brain works and produces the mind. As a result, Dennett maintains the same perspective, but his arguments are more refined. He presents his Compatibilist position far more strongly. He does not deny that the universe is deterministic. He agrees that everything has a prior cause, and there is no soul or any other type of homuncular device within us that makes all our decisions. But he argues that evolution, particularly cultural or memetic evolution, has created a mind that no other animals possess, which gave birth to our ability to make moral judgments and decisions. He tries to provide a naturalistic basis for our agency.

Even though I found his arguments and examples strong and novel, it still could not convince me that they can dispel the arguments forwarded by the Determinists and Hard Incompatibilists. It still feels like he could not accept these views on the grounds of all the terrible things that could happen if we do not believe in the existence of Free Will. As an exceptionally powerful thinker and as a philosopher, it is probably too hard for him to accept that there are physical limits of our mind that make it impossible to think we do not have agency.

We are hardwired to find causal justifications for everything we see or do. There is plenty of experimental evidence of that in modern neuroscience. One clear piece of evidence of that is that we are simply incapable of not rationalizing all of our actions, no matter how bad. Therefore, no matter how strongly we believe, intellectually, that free will does not exist, we will still continue to act as if we have free choice. There is little risk that we will become inert and stop making moral choices. With greater acceptance, we may take a different view on criminal punishment, leaning more towards corrective actions, but it is unlikely that we will ever stop praising good deeds or despising wrong ones.

I would love to know where Dennett stands on the issue today, in 2026.



Ghost-Eye (* * - - -)
Ghosh, Amitav

Amitabh Ghosh's latest novel starts extremely well, grabbing the reader's attention immediately. It describes a strictly vegetarian business family in South Calcutta in the 1960s, the place and time I grew up in, where a child in the family causes tremendous upheaval by asking to eat fish. From that point on, the author holds our attention and keeps us eager to read the next chapter. That is what I have come to expect from Ghosh. He is a brilliant storyteller, despite his tendency to impress the readers with his deep research. However, I must say, this is probably his most dissatisfying novel so far, and I think I have read all of his books.

Very strange and magical things happen throughout the book. They range from reincarnation to premonition, even celestial light displays and divine interventions. Perhaps they are meant as devices of magic realism, but the author's desperate attempt to make them believable through numerous academic research references hints that the author may actually be convinced these events are real and is trying to convince us. No other magic realist I have read tries so hard to convince us of the magic; instead, it just happens, making it possible for the reader to see where reality transitions into magic. My entire life's experience and education revolt against such claims of supernatural activity, so I had to take it as a literary device. Still, the necessary suspension of disbelief was really hard.

My bigger problem was the author's attempts to convince us that the "old" ways can save us from the technological disaster we are marching toward. At some point, the protagonist wants to cook fish in a Bengali style in New York City. He needs mustard oil and realizes the FDA does not allow importing mustard oil in the US because it is not approved for consumption. In reality, this oil is readily available at any Indian grocery store, labeled as a massaging oil. We all use it for consumption, and as a Bengali writer, he probably knows it. However, his character buys non-GMO mustard seeds to squeeze his own oil. Of course, the character is free to do as he pleases, but the point the author is trying to make is about GMOs. He also laments that India used to have thousands of varieties of rice before the industrial monoculture trend.

The reality is, almost anything we eat, for thousands of years, has been genetically modified. They are all the result of relentless genetic engineering by farmers across the world, using the best tools they had at the time—selective breeding and hybridization. The purpose was always to improve some aspect of the crop through genetic changes. Since direct gene manipulation was impossible, they used random methods to improve a target trait and selectively promoted plants that produced the desired result. For example, the last natural form of corn was available in Mexico 9,000 years ago. Balsas teosinte produced tiny, hard-shelled spikes. Since then, through human effort, we developed today's corn varieties. The same goes for all agricultural products. The thousands of rice varieties the author mentioned, each of them were the result of human manipulation. The only difference is that, rather than relying on accidental improvements in a given trait, humans can now directly manipulate genes, achieving in a few years what would have taken centuries. Most agricultural scientists agree that if we strictly followed the old methods of agriculture, we cannot feed the 8 billion people we have today, or the 10 billion later in this century. 

The latter half of the book is about the terrible things that technology has brought about. No one in their right mind would disagree that global climate change is terrible. But the author seems to denounce all of technology and prefers a world where mysterious magical and spiritual forces liberate us from these ills. I find such a position not only irresponsible, but dishonest. Technology is a manifestation of human ingenuity, just as literature, painting, music, philosophy, mathematics, and science. Anything we have achieved is due to this spirit of creating new things. Without technology, millions would die each year from infections like smallpox and polio. A simple cut would be life-threatening without antibiotics. Billions would have died of Malthusian overpopulation and famine. Traveling from India to the US would be unthinkable. Even this book could never have been printed. Therefore, when all of us, including the author, cannot survive without the fruits of modern technology, it is irresponsible to denounce technology and wish for an older, simpler world. 

The author dismisses any technological solution to global warming as techno-utopia and a fairytale, without any argument. When have we solved any of our problems without human ingenuity? We are in a mess, but hoping to get out of it without utilizing the collective effort of the best of our minds is also a pipe dream. Magic and divine intervention will not save us.

Back to the novel, as the story progressed, the characters and situations became increasingly unbelievable and contrived. The characters of Tipu, Rafi, and the older Varsha are at best caricatures. Their speech patterns are forced and heavily underlined. The language used throughout the novel is full of clichés—something I did not expect from a mature writer.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the book, but in the end, I felt I could have skipped it.



The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality (* * * * -)
Clark, Andy

The book introduces a novel way of thinking about how our mind works. We generally understand the mind as receiving signals from various parts of our body and sensory organs, which our brain then progressively processes until the mind perceives reality around us. This new approach improves on that view and, in the process, explains the neuronal connections going the other way, which sometimes exceed the incoming connections by a factor of four.

The theory suggests that our brain is ultimately a very sophisticated prediction machine. It uses prior experience to predict our external reality. It sends these predictions to our sense organs. Whenever a mismatch occurs between the prediction and the actual observation, an error signal is sent to higher parts of the brain, allowing it to create a more refined, up-to-date version of reality.

The author supports this view through numerous pieces of experimental evidence. It also explains many observations that traditional theories cannot explain. The later part of the book covers many mental phenomena that this approach can explain and even help treat.

I am no expert to judge whether this theory has legs, but it did help me understand many things I have observed in myself and people I know.

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The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind (* * * * -)
Griffiths, Tom

This remarkable book attempts to chronicle the scientific efforts to understand how the human mind works. It begins with the first attempts to understand logic mathematically three hundred years ago and ends with the latest advances in artificial intelligence. This journey has unfolded in many directions, touching disciplines including mathematics, logic, psychology, behavioral science, neuroscience, linguistics, statistics, network theory, and neural networks. Often, one group didn't even know about or care about developments in other areas. The brilliance of this book is to bring them all under one perspective. The reader is invited to see the big picture and how they converge towards a general understanding of how the mind works.