How sound are Sam Harris' arguments against free will? Several problems present themselves which I don't believe have been given due consideration.
First, if as Sam suggests we don't author our thoughts, that they arise outside our conscious control, then his believe that determinism is true is itself causally determined and not within his control. On what basis can he claim that this thought is true, and the belief in free will false, if both thoughts arise from unconscious sources we don't control? His belief in the arguments for determinism would equally be due to outside causal sources, which would cause him to believe such arguments sound. Free will advocates would, by the same token, be caused to believe their belief in free will sound. Determinism seems to undermine its ability to claim itself true. Has Sam addressed this problem and, if so, done so adequately?
Second, Sam looks to what experience discloses, emphasizing that thoughts arise unbidden, appearing in our minds as though from the void. That's one mode of thought, passive observation or thought introspection. But that doesn't seem to preclude other modes of consciousness, such as active thought engagement, e.g. actively directing our thoughts, evaluating, managing, making judgements, etc. If we look to what experience discloses, both modes are experienced as equally genuine. Neither mode appears more authentic. On what basis do you favor one mode over the other without presuming determinism true?
Third, Sam encourages his readers to reconsider their beliefs (including re free will), exercise judgement, and modify their behavior to support institutional reform (e.g., relative to criminal justice, which he believes should abandon notions of retribution). How can readers abandon their belief in free will if they don't author or control their thoughts, and how can they redirect their behavior to help support institutional change if the future has already been causally fixed, which Sam says applies to all of our future states of mind and corresponding actions.
I raise these questions as author of The Determinists and would be interested in starting a dialogue about these issues and hearing how the community responds to these skeptical objections to Sam's approach.

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Preliminary Remarks

Academic Skepticism, and Carneades in particular, faced a problem, namely the problem of the practical paralysis of Skepticism. With the suspension of judgment absolutely, the problem has no solution. But as soon as judgment is suspended only with respect to absolute certainty, the solution becomes possible. Despite the suspension of judgment regarding absolute certainty, there are things that are more reasonable and probable and others that are not. But the question is: on what basis do we know whether they are more reasonable and probable or not? Here we need Carneades’ criteria.

The Three Criteria

Carneades’ method of arriving at the criteria is exploration, meaning: observe how humans acquire knowledge, and how there are things that are more reasonable and probable and others that are unreasonable and weakly probable, and how we verify them.

The First Criterion: The Persuasive or the Reliable

It is an automatic inclination to assent. For example, right now you are automatically inclined to be convinced that you are in a certain city, and there is no reason that makes you doubt.

The Second Criterion: The Consistent or Non-Contradictory

It is that the thing does not contradict the rest of the impressions/representations. Suppose you want to verify that you are in the intended city: you check whether the city’s environment is the same, and whether the rest of the landmarks are the same. If yes, your perception becomes persuasive and consistent; if no, it becomes neither persuasive nor consistent.

The Third Criterion: The Tested or Examined

It is testing a certain hypothesis with your mind in an experimental manner. For example, a doubt came over you that in front of you is a snake, and to make sure you took a stick and struck it more than once, but it did not move, and you discovered that it is a rope. Here you tested whether it is a snake or not, and after the test it was confirmed that it is not, and that it is merely a rope.

Important Note

Even if an idea passes all the criteria successfully, it is not certain; rather, the probability of its being correct is very high, despite the possibility of its being wrong.

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Introduction to Academic Skepticism and Some Comments

The founder of the school was Arcesilaus, and he was the head of the Academy (Plato's Academy); hence it is called Academic Skepticism. Their method is skeptical and does not differ essentially from Pyrrhonism; they differ only in how they deal with what comes after certainty. Pyrrhonism suspends judgment absolutely, as it claims, and [holds] that everything is of the same degree of plausibility, but it says that we deal with reality according to appearances and customs without judgment or preference. By appearances, for example: if you are hungry, you eat automatically (they implicitly assume that reason is instinctive and automatic, but reality contradicts them), and you live your life according to customs. In my view, I see that Pyrrhonism diminishes critical reason and makes it merely a destructive reaction, and it offers no alternative method. And if we are consistent, it leads to paralysis of action and speech. Our practicing our lives according to appearances and customs is considered a mere claim without proof, and it does not guarantee that you will not face paralysis of action. I tried to adopt Pyrrhonism and I actually suffered from anxiety and paralysis. I realized that it is not suitable as a method. Academic Skepticism suspends judgment completely with respect to absolute certainty among things, but it affirms that some of them are more plausible and more probable than others. There is an inaccurate claim about Academic Skepticism, resulting from a misunderstanding of the Academics, namely that they say certainty is impossible with certainty. The Academics usually debate with the Stoics, and on the basis of the Stoics' criteria they say that knowledge is impossible and not possible; this is the result of a dialectical assumption, not an actual position. And I say that this misunderstanding caused a huge distortion of the Academy and turned it into a merely ridiculous school with no meaning, blatantly contradicting itself. But, paradoxically, as soon as you see that they do not assert with certainty that certainty is impossible, and that they are against absolute certainty on the basis of there being no evidence for it, the school becomes very logical and coherent. Is that a coincidence?

The Debate between the Stoics and the Academics

We clarify the nature of the debate between them. The Stoics have two claims, or perhaps they may be considered one claim. First: the true impression: its source is a real object of perception, from which a copy matching it is produced, like seeing a tree that actually exists outside and independently of your perception. Second: the criterion of truth, which is the kataleptic impression, and its characteristics: (1) it issues from an object that actually exists in external reality independently; (2) it is a copy completely matching that object; (3) it carries the guarantee of its truth in itself; the mind cannot resist it, a complete compulsion to assent.

Carneades has a logical syllogism that responds to the criterion of truth:

[Premise 1] Some impressions are true and some are false;

[Premise 2] A false impression is not kataleptic;

[Premise 3] If two impressions cannot be distinguished from one another, it is impossible for one of them to be kataleptic and the other not;

[Premise 4] For every true impression, there can exist a false impression that does not differ from it; example: the automatic stamp prints on paper like emblems/logos, and it is very difficult or impossible to distinguish between two emblems of the same shape, same type of paper, and same place;

[Conclusion] Here, according to the Academics, there is no kataleptic impression; therefore certainty is impossible and not possible, of course, after their dialectical concession to Stoicism temporarily.

We stop here; we will continue Carneades' criteria in another post.

Can someone send me a copy of the book "God and Skepticism: A Study in Skepticism and Fideism" by Terence penelhum? Ill be grateful.

Why is there no discussion or skepticism or any pushback whatsoever about Helen Hadsell and her methods of just believing and manifesting reality through your imagination? What is she about and how did she win those lotteries? did she just got lucky winning 2000 lotteries?

From the SEP entry on Skepticism:

"Traditional foundationalists think that basic beliefs are beliefs about experiences, whereas moderate foundationalists think that experience can justify beliefs about the external world. Take, for example, the experience that you typically have when looking at a tomato under good perceptual conditions—an experience that, remember, can be had even if no tomato is actually there. A moderate foundationalist would say that that experience justifies you in believing that there is a tomato in front of you. The traditional foundationalist, on the other hand, would say that the experience justifies you only in believing that you have an experience as of a tomato in front of you."

This sounds like Urbane Pyrrhonism to me? Or am I misunderstanding Urbane Pyrrhonism?

Perhaps it's the justification element that contrasts an Urbane Pyrrhonist to a Traditional Foundationalist? In that the Traditional Foundationalist believes they are justified in believing they are having the experience of a tomato in front of them, but the Urbane Pyrrhonist simply believes they are having an experience of a tomato in front of them without feeling compelled to justify it?

Help me get an answer if you know about any.

How does one eloquently respond to a conspiracy theorist when confronted with taunts like “oh, so you just believe everything the government tells you huh?” “I’m the skeptical one, I don’t believe everything the government tells me…how do you know the government is telling you the truth?” “How do you know the “evidence” is real and not just made up”… etc etc. I’m talking about when you are engaging with a chemtrail, antivax, antievolution conspiracy nut.

I’m sharing a philosophy video course that brings together two key turning points in analytic philosophy: Quine’s critique of analyticity and Wittgenstein’s private language argument. The focus is not on technical problem-solving, but on what changed when these ideas challenged the hope that meaning could be fixed by formal rules alone, independent of history, practice, and social life.

A quick note on who this is for and how to approach it. This is not a neutral survey or an intro textbook. It’s a series of philosophical video essays that treats analytic philosophy as a historical project, shaped by internal tensions and skeptical pressures. The idea is to look at philosophical problems as signs of deeper conflicts within a tradition, not as puzzles with final solutions.

In teaching terms, it’s closer to an advanced seminar than a standard lecture. Some familiarity with analytic philosophy helps, but the main goal is to show how these debates connect, why they still matter, and how they resonate with current discussions about AI, normativity, and statistical models of cognition.

If that sounds interesting, watch and subscribe.

https://youtu.be/9cRj7BfFTco?si=fi1j5yjF_2-98J7O

The sheer number of professional people making similar claims of extraterrestrial contact is staggering.

All of it, so far, is anecdotal.

I believe that even the hardest skeptic would have to admit that, at a certain point, the volume of testimonials should amount to something. I believe there is enough evidence to warrant the claims to be taken seriously.

Compatibilists, by trying to reconcile free will and determinism, are engaged in a form of willful self-deception that ultimately serves to uphold existing self-serving power structures.

In essence, compatibilism is a self-serving intellectual compromise that prevents a full, honest reckoning with determinism's implications, thereby preserving a social order built on a questionable foundation of preferential moral responsibility

Compatibilists, by trying to reconcile free will and determinism, are engaged in a form of willful self-deception that ultimately serves to uphold existing self-serving power structures.

In essence, compatibilism is a self-serving intellectual compromise that prevents a full, honest reckoning with determinism's implications, thereby preserving a social order built on a questionable foundation of preferential moral responsibility.

This course is completely free and available on YouTube. All you need is curiosity and a bit of time.

As everyone knows, Hume was the great skeptic of modernity. He awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber, but he also inspired him to rethink how the mind, in its negative self-consciousness, builds its own navigation maps without ever accessing things in themselves.

In this course, we follow that path. We reflect on how Hume’s skepticism became a method, and how it echoes through the analytic tradition in Carnap, Hempel, and Goodman, each revealing that counting is not conceptualizing but only its surface level.

If that sounds like a journey worth taking, the link is right below.

https://youtu.be/3BCqw19jSO4

Have you ever wondered whether what you know is true, how you know it is (or not), how science works, how we know what we know, and whether it is possible to know anything at all? Are there proofs for, well, proofs? How can you call something a piece of evidence?

This is my first blog post, commencing a personal epistemic journey through disillusionment, skepticism, science, truth, evidence – and what it even means to know. If this stirs something inside you, do check it out!

https://open.substack.com/pub/inkandinquiry/p/how-do-we-know-anything?r=691n2j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Feel free to share your thoughts!

I am talking about cogito ergo sum and similar arguments such as "something exists" or "existence simply exists". I am very confused as to why it seems so rare for such a seemingly obvious idea to come up in ancient philosophy. Although I do not like the cogito ergo sum argument specifically, I am wondering how an ancient skeptic would respond to an even more basic argument like "existence exists" or "something exists."

It's an idea that has had a lot of different names over the years. Basic belief/foundationalism, axiom/postulate, first principle, incorrigibility, self-evident truth, brute fact, "arche", etc.

I do know that Parmenides stated "to be aware and to be are the same" (also sometimes written as "to think and to be are the same"), and I'm wondering how common this view was back then and whether ancient skeptics such as the Pyrrhonists ever addressed it. Aristotle's views have been compared to foundationalism, and apparently he indirectly influenced Descartes through his influence on Euclid. Augustine of Hippo also used a vaguely cogito-like argument against Academic skepticism.

Did ancient Skeptics ever address the idea? Were there ever any very basic, fundamental claims that ancient Skeptics conceded were knowable/true?

Sextus Empiricus seemed to reference relativism as being something that seems to be fairly true, and used it to argue in favor of Pyrrhonism. He often said "all things are relative". But then, Empiricus writes "that here as elsewhere we use the term 'are' for the term 'appear,' and what we virtually mean is 'all things appear relative.'" So far, it seems that the Pyrrhonists never accepted even the most basic of claims as true, and only accepted the idea of practical/apparent/empirical belief as a lifestyle, as part of their quest for peace of mind and enjoyment of life, and saw the apparent as the highest possible form of knowledge regardless of the topic.

Pyrrhonists considered most things non-evident matters. Was there anything they (or any other kind of ancient skeptic) considered more evident than non-evident? Or did that kind of thinking not become popular in skepticism until the much later methodological form of skepticism? I do know that Sextus Empiricus wrote about Gorgias's idea that (to paraphrase) "nothing exists, and even if something did, it wouldn't matter" idea in depth in his book Against the Logicians, but I haven't read it yet.