Sam Harris’s Materialistic Interpretation of Free Will and Its Criticism from Mulla Sadra’s Viewpoint

Document Type : Scientific-research

Author

Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Faculty of Theology and Islamic Studies, Tabriz University, Tabriz, Iran (corresponding author)

Abstract

According to the new findings of neuroscience, some thinkers have introduced determinism into a new field and benefited from the new scientific findings in order to strengthen their deterministic view. By using Benjamin Libet’s experiment and emphasizing on the factor of environment, Sam Harris considers free will only as an illusion, and believes that genetics and environment are the two main factors in determining our behaviors. On the other hand, contrary to Harris, Mulla Sadra believes that the Will is one of the faculties of the soul and we cannot believe in another origin for will out of the soul. This paper tries to examine Sam Harris’s and Mulla Sadra’s foundations in explaining and analyzing the free will, by a descriptive-analytical method and a critical approach, and finally leads to the criticism of Harris’s materialistic view. Sam Harris’s approach to explaining frech as being non-inclusive, the extreme and deterministic emphasis on the environment, emphasizing on the factor of chance, justifying some behaviors as being random, and considering human beings as biochemical puppets; and, based on Mulla Sadra’s Transcendent Philosophy, it can be controversial from different aspects.

Keywords

References

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