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?

薩姆·哈裏斯Sam Harris

被《連綫》雜誌評選為2012年影響世界的50人之一，撼動道德世界的科學勇士。

美國著名哲學傢、神經學傢、公共知識分子以及暢銷書作傢。

斯坦福大學哲學學士、加州大學洛杉磯分校神經學博士。

非盈利組織理智工程（Project Reason）聯閤創始人兼首席執行官。

他的作品榮獲美國筆會非虛構文學奬，以15種不同的語言在全球齣版發行，並引起《紐約時報》、《科學美國人》、《自然》、《滾石》、《新聞周刊》、《時代周刊》以及其他刊物的廣泛關注。

他還在《紐約時報》、《洛杉磯時報》、《泰晤士報》、《波士頓環球報》、《大西洋月刊》、《新聞周刊》、《神經學年鑒》等刊物發錶過多篇文章。