According to Sam Harris, free will is an illusion. In fact, he says, the illusion of free will is itself an illusion. He lays a compelling argument about how at the end of the day, no matter how we frame it, ‘we’ are not in control of our lives, thoughts and feelings, but we feel like we are. I think some forms of Buddhism have that same idea – that deeper you try to find the seat of consciousness or the soul, the more you realise there’s really no one home. You are the house and consciousness is one of the many rooms/processes in there that seems to assign agency to our activities – only after they are decided though.
