Sam Harris on the asymmetry between consciousness and free will (clip from the 2024 conversation)
Sharing a clip from the Sam Harris conversation. Sam articulates a distinction that I keep returning to:
— Consciousness can't be an illusion. Every act of doubting it is itself a conscious experience, so the regress closes immediately. He calls it "the ground truth."
— Free will is a different category entirely. Not illusory in the same Cartesian sense — incoherent. The concept doesn't survive any consistent metaphysical commitment about causality.
There's a thought-experiment Sam describes — a predictive machine that could disabuse a subject of even the FEELING of free will — that I think is the most interesting move he makes in the whole conversation. Brian pushes back with an infinite-regress objection.
Worth a watch if you missed it the first time around.