QUESTION = Sam Harris' argument that we do not truly have free will.

GENERATION = This short video helped me understand it a lot better. It is too short, but answers your question very well. _URL_0_ 

RETRIEVAL #0 = Free will---point in time and a given matrix of empirical circumstances, and so something that is merely possible from the perspective of one observer may be necessary from the perspective of an omniscient. Some philosophers follow Philo of Alexandria, a philosopher known for his homocentrism, in holding that free will is a feature of a human's soul, and thus that non-human animals lack free will. Section::::See also. BULLET::::- Agency (LDS Church) BULLET::::- Buridan's ass BULLET::::- "De libero arbitrio" – early treatise about the freedom of will by Augustine of Hippo BULLET::::- Free will in antiquity BULLET::::- Free will in theology BULLET::::- Free will theorem BULLET::::- Locus of control BULLET::::- Karma BULLET::::- Prevenient grace BULLET::::- Problem of mental causation BULLET::::- Prospection BULLET::::- Responsibility assumption BULLET::::- Voluntarism (philosophy) Section::::References. Section::::References.:Bibliography. BULLET::::- Hawking, Stephen, and Mlodinow, Leonard, "The Grand Design", New York, Bantam Books 

RETRIEVAL #1 = Free Will (book)---argument, which has been challenged by Adrian G. Guggisberg and Annaïs Mottaz. A study by Aaron Schurger and colleagues published in PNAS challenged assumptions about the causal nature of the readiness potential itself (and the "pre-movement buildup" of neural activity in general), thus denying the conclusions drawn from studies such as Libet's and Fried's. In response to this, Harris has noted in his numerous talks and on his podcast that his argument against free will does not rely on the findings from neuroscience, but is instead focused mainly on the logical incoherency of the possibility of free will. In one of his guest appearances on the Joe Rogan Podcast, Harris says, "Nothing hinges on [the recent experiments in neuroscience]. Even if..the decision of neural activity in the brain that gave you the decision and your subjective feeling of having decided...were coincident, even if there was no time lag...it still is coming out of nowhere in a sense for you subjectively. You're still not in control of it. It's still being caused by events that you didn't cause." Section::::See also. BULLET::::- Free will BULLET::::- Immanuel Kant BULLET::::- Neuroscience of free will 

RETRIEVAL #2 = Conscious automatism---substance in the book "Grandest Illusion: The Seductive Myth of Free Will", by Norman Haughness, which states forcefully the case for acknowledging the power of exceptionless determinism in human behavior. In Grandest Illusion the arguments claiming that the human will is free in any or all cases from total dependence on causal antecedents are analyzed and criticized in an overtly partisan effort to reveal the flaws in their coherence and logical validity. This in contrast to most recent literature in the field, well-exemplified by "The Oxford Handbook of Free Will", edited by Robert Kane, whose contributors without exception take positions supporting voluntarism or maintaining agnostic reservations. Haughness contends that freedom of willing is no more than a faith, which he calls “voluntarism“. He claims that, despite having little empirical basis except in unexamined intuition, free will has been accommodated and, indeed, vigorously defended by philosophers in large part because its abandonment is emotively an extremely repellent notion, suggesting loss of personal autonomy to nearly all who contemplate it. Equally intolerable to many is the fear that, without it, moral responsibility would lose its customarily revered place in society and moral chaos would thereupon necessarily ensue. This problem he addresses only briefly, urging that it is only by changing prior conditioning that conduct can be made conducive to decriminalizing society rather than, as at present, by reliance on ethical norms that 

RETRIEVAL #3 = Free will---is consistent with having caused the second event. For example, if a person hears an explosion and sees a tree fall down that person is likely to infer that the explosion caused the tree to fall over. However, if the explosion occurs after the tree falls down (that is, the first requirement is not met), or rather than an explosion, the person hears the ring of a telephone (that is, the second requirement is not met), then that person is not likely to infer that either noise caused the tree to fall down. Wegner has applied this principle to the inferences people make about their own conscious will. People typically experience a thought that is consistent with a behavior, and then they observe themselves performing this behavior. As a result, people infer that their thoughts must have caused the observed behavior. However, Wegner has been able to manipulate people's thoughts and behaviors so as to conform to or violate the two requirements for causal inference. Through such work, Wegner has been able to show that people often experience conscious will over behaviors that they have not, in fact, caused – and conversely, that people can be led to experience a lack of will over behaviors they did cause. For instance, priming subjects with information about an effect increases the probability that a person falsely believes is the cause. The implication 

RETRIEVAL #4 = Philosophy of mind---his or her identity consists of also have much to do with the philosophy of mind. There are two subjects that, in connection with the philosophy of the mind, have aroused special attention: free will and the self. Section::::Topics related to philosophy of mind.:Free will. In the context of philosophy of mind, the problem of free will takes on renewed intensity. This is certainly the case, at least, for materialistic determinists. According to this position, natural laws completely determine the course of the material world. Mental states, and therefore the will as well, would be material states, which means human behavior and decisions would be completely determined by natural laws. Some take this reasoning a step further: people cannot determine by themselves what they want and what they do. Consequently, they are not free. This argumentation is rejected, on the one hand, by the compatibilists. Those who adopt this position suggest that the question "Are we free?" can only be answered once we have determined what the term "free" means. The opposite of "free" is not "caused" but "compelled" or "coerced". It is not appropriate to identify freedom with indetermination. A free act is one where the agent could have done otherwise if it had chosen otherwise. In this sense a person can be free even though determinism is true. The most important compatibilist in the history of 

RETRIEVAL #5 = Free will---present (that is it is already determined as either true or false), and is referred to as the problem of future contingents. Section::::Western philosophy.:Incompatibilism.:Hard incompatibilism.:Omniscience. Omniscience is the capacity to know everything that there is to know (included in which are all future events), and is a property often attributed to a creator deity. Omniscience implies the existence of destiny. Some authors have claimed that free will cannot coexist with omniscience. One argument asserts that an omniscient creator not only implies destiny but a form of high level predeterminism such as hard theological determinism or predestination – that they have independently fixed all events and outcomes in the universe in advance. In such a case, even if an individual could have influence over their lower level physical system, their choices in regard to this cannot be their own, as is the case with libertarian free will. Omniscience features as an incompatible-properties argument for the existence of God, known as the argument from free will, and is closely related to other such arguments, for example the incompatibility of omnipotence with a good creator deity (i.e. if a deity knew what they were going to choose, then they are responsible for letting them choose it). Section::::Western philosophy.:Incompatibilism.:Hard incompatibilism.:Predeterminism. Predetermin 

RETRIEVAL #6 = Free will---the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature." Section::::Western philosophy.:Other views.:Free will as a pseudo-problem. Historically, most of the philosophical effort invested in resolving the dilemma has taken the form of close examination of definitions and ambiguities in the concepts designated by "free", "freedom", "will", "choice" and so forth. Defining 'free will' often revolves around the meaning of phrases like "ability to do otherwise" or "alternative possibilities". This emphasis upon words has led some philosophers to claim the problem is merely verbal and thus a pseudo-problem. In response, others point out the complexity of decision making and the importance of nuances in the terminology. Section::::Western philosophy.:History of free will. The problem of free will has been identified in ancient Greek philosophical literature. The notion of compatibilist free will has been attributed to both Aristotle (fourth century BCE) and Epictetus (1st century CE); "it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing or choosing something that made us have control over them". According to Susanne Bobzien, the notion of incompatibilist free will is perhaps first identified in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias (third century CE); "what makes us have control over things is the fact that we are causally undetermined in our decision and thus can freely decide