Free Will - Sam Harris

Free Will

By: Sam Harris

Paperback | 26 January 2012

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $24.99

$18.75

25%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $4.69 with

In Stock and Aims to ship in 1-2 business days

Please note the pages on this book have been produced with bevelled or rough edge to create an old style look. The publisher has deliberately chosen to produce the book this way.

Booktopia Comments
This book has beveled edges.
Product Description
The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously demonstrated that activity in the brain''s motor regions can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab recently used fMRI data to show that some "conscious" decisions can be predicted up to 10 seconds before they enter awareness (long before the preparatory motor activity detected by Libet). Clearly, findings of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the sense that one is the conscious source of one''s actions.

The question of free will is no mere curio of philosophy seminars. A belief in free will underwrites both the religious notion of "sin" and our enduring commitment to retributive justice. The Supreme Court has called free will a "universal and persistent" foundation for our system of law. Any scientific developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the ethics of punishing people for their bad behaviour in question.In Free Will Harris debates these ideas and asks whether or not, given what brain science is telling us, we actually have free will?
Industry Reviews
"In this elegant and provocative book, Sam Harris demonstrates—with great intellectual ferocity and panache—that free will is an inherently flawed and incoherent concept, even in subjective terms. If he is right, the book will radically change the way we view ourselves as human beings."
—V. S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, UCSD, and author of The Tell-Tale Brain

Other Editions and Formats

ePUB

Published: 6th March 2012

Instant Digital Delivery to your Kobo Reader App

More in Popular Science

Addicted to Anxiety - Owen O'Kane

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
How Emotions Are Made : The Secret Life of the Brain - Lisa Feldman Barrett
How To Change Your Mind : New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan
Behave : The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst - Robert M Sapolsky
Swainston's Fishes of Australia : The complete illustrated guide - Roger Swainston
Breath : The New Science of a Lost Art - James Nestor

RRP $24.99

$18.07

28%
OFF
Open When... : A Companion for Life's Twists & Turns - Dr Julie Smith
Lifespan : Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To - David Sinclair

RRP $26.99

$22.95

15%
OFF
Dopamine Nation : Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence - Anna Lembke
Captivate : The Science of Succeeding with People - Vanessa Van Edwards

RRP $22.99

$16.75

27%
OFF
Being Mortal : Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End - Atul Gawande
Outliers : The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Quiet : The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain