It is tricky to talk in self-consistent ways about lack of free will. Obviously any kind of prescriptivism is right out: since there is no free will you can’t consciously steer the future in any specific direction, you can only have an illusion of it. It is possible to talk about lack of free will in descriptive terms, however. For example, a statement like “one should hold people accountable even though free will does not exist, for the benefit of the society as a whole”, can be expressed as “societies where people are held accountable for their actions tend to be more successful, by some relevant metric, than those where they are not”.
It is also easy to misinterpret a self-consistent view as self-contradictory, if one is not careful (this is not an urge to be careful, that would be inconsistent in itself, just an observation I had no control over talking about). For example when he says “needn’t” a reader can interpret it as “shouldn’t”, even though that’s not what he meant. I haven’t read Harris’s book, but my guess would be that he takes appropriate care not to sound like he does more than describing the world he sees.
I haven’t read Harris’s book, but my guess would be that he takes appropriate care not to sound like he does more than describing the world he sees.
I had originally expected exactly that from the book! But, in my opinion, it didn’t turn out to be the case. I’m pretty sure that Harris could have done it if he intended to. My guess is that he wanted to be more relatable and appealing to a layman reader rather than polish his speech too much.
It is tricky to talk in self-consistent ways about lack of free will. Obviously any kind of prescriptivism is right out: since there is no free will you can’t consciously steer the future in any specific direction, you can only have an illusion of it. It is possible to talk about lack of free will in descriptive terms, however. For example, a statement like “one should hold people accountable even though free will does not exist, for the benefit of the society as a whole”, can be expressed as “societies where people are held accountable for their actions tend to be more successful, by some relevant metric, than those where they are not”.
It is also easy to misinterpret a self-consistent view as self-contradictory, if one is not careful (this is not an urge to be careful, that would be inconsistent in itself, just an observation I had no control over talking about). For example when he says “needn’t” a reader can interpret it as “shouldn’t”, even though that’s not what he meant. I haven’t read Harris’s book, but my guess would be that he takes appropriate care not to sound like he does more than describing the world he sees.
I had originally expected exactly that from the book! But, in my opinion, it didn’t turn out to be the case. I’m pretty sure that Harris could have done it if he intended to. My guess is that he wanted to be more relatable and appealing to a layman reader rather than polish his speech too much.