ltlee1
2023-12-23 14:00:45 UTC
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/determined-a-science-of-life-without-free-will/
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Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will
Determined
Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Penguin Press, 2023, 528pp., $35.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780525560975.
Reviewed by John Martin Fischer, University of California, Riverside
2023.11.3
This is a big, splashy book, both in number of pages and ambitions. It is much ballyhooed, receiving reviews and attention throughout the Anglophone world. Sapolsky wishes to disabuse us of what he takes to be our false beliefs that we are free and morally responsible, and even active agents, three central and foundational aspects of human life and our navigation of it. Much of the book contains summaries (necessarily somewhat brief) of various scientific and mathematical fields (and sub-areas) relevant to his topics: neuroscience (the appendix is a “primer on neuroscience”), chaos theory, quantum mechanics, emergence, and some results from psychology and sociology.
It is a compendious book. The summaries will be helpful in bringing readers up to speed, or at least beginning that process, in a wide variety of disciplines and areas of inquiry. Whereas many in the history of philosophy have contended that all our mental states and behavior are causally determined, a significant feature of this book is to fill in this claim with its specific empirical basis. The view that causal determinism is true is not new, nor is the view that this entails no free will or moral responsibility, but Sapolsky collates and marshals the evidence (some of it recent and cutting-edge) as it bears on these issues. The cumulative effect of the discussions and Sapolsky’s analyses can be an overwhelming sense that we might be wrong about our very foundational beliefs in free will and moral responsibility, and even our selfhood. He writes, “…put all the scientific results together, from all the relevant scientific disciplines, and there’s no room for free will” (8; emphasis in text).[1]
Considered as philosophy, however, the picture is very different. Right off the bat, one is struck by the title. Sapolsky writes, “This book … is both about the science of why there is no free will and the science of how we might best live once we accept that.” (10) But these do not appear to be scientific questions. Science, of course, is relevant; but that does not make free will a scientific question. Note that slavery is beyond a doubt morally wrong. The empirical facts about slavery are relevant, but this does not make the issue of the moral justifiability of slavery a scientific question. How we should adjust our attitudes and behavior in light of a belief in determinism, if we were to acquire such a belief, is definitely not a scientific question.
Surprisingly, in a book about free will, Sapolsky offers no definition of it (or, for that matter, determinism—or even moral responsibility!). He writes, “What is free will? Groan… I’ll do my best to mitigate the drag of this” (14). Although he does not present a full definition proper, it is clear that he holds that free will requires the falsity of determinism—by definition (not as a result of argumentation):
[To establish free will] [s]how me a neuron being a causeless cause in this total sense. …Show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behavior is independent of the sum of its biological past, and for the purposes of this book, you’ve demonstrated free will. (15)
This is problematic in various ways. First, it claims that “being a causeless cause” or “independent of the sum of its biological past” would be sufficient for a choice/action’s being an instance of free will. This is however surely false; pure randomness is incompatible with the control involved in free will. (In his discussion of quantum indeterminacy, Sapolsky is aware of this.) More plausibly, we should interpret him (here and throughout the book) as contending that, as a matter of definition or “meaning,” indeterminism is a necessary condition of free will. Note that the indeterminism of “causeless cause” or “independent of the sum of its biological past” is a very strong kind of indeterminism, leaving out the more appealing idea of not being fully determined by antecedent causes. (Sapolsky elides the distinction between causation and deterministic causation and thus does not consider indeterministic causal accounts of free will).
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Two analogies come to mind.
1) The Stone soup: Free will is the stone of the stone soup. But of course, the stone is totally not needed to make the soup, objectively speaking.
2)The traffic jam: Is a traffic jam the result of no free will because no one will a traffic jam such that one could reach a destination late? Or the result of too many free will, each wants to get to the destination sooner than later and takes the supposedly best route?
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Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will
Determined
Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Penguin Press, 2023, 528pp., $35.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780525560975.
Reviewed by John Martin Fischer, University of California, Riverside
2023.11.3
This is a big, splashy book, both in number of pages and ambitions. It is much ballyhooed, receiving reviews and attention throughout the Anglophone world. Sapolsky wishes to disabuse us of what he takes to be our false beliefs that we are free and morally responsible, and even active agents, three central and foundational aspects of human life and our navigation of it. Much of the book contains summaries (necessarily somewhat brief) of various scientific and mathematical fields (and sub-areas) relevant to his topics: neuroscience (the appendix is a “primer on neuroscience”), chaos theory, quantum mechanics, emergence, and some results from psychology and sociology.
It is a compendious book. The summaries will be helpful in bringing readers up to speed, or at least beginning that process, in a wide variety of disciplines and areas of inquiry. Whereas many in the history of philosophy have contended that all our mental states and behavior are causally determined, a significant feature of this book is to fill in this claim with its specific empirical basis. The view that causal determinism is true is not new, nor is the view that this entails no free will or moral responsibility, but Sapolsky collates and marshals the evidence (some of it recent and cutting-edge) as it bears on these issues. The cumulative effect of the discussions and Sapolsky’s analyses can be an overwhelming sense that we might be wrong about our very foundational beliefs in free will and moral responsibility, and even our selfhood. He writes, “…put all the scientific results together, from all the relevant scientific disciplines, and there’s no room for free will” (8; emphasis in text).[1]
Considered as philosophy, however, the picture is very different. Right off the bat, one is struck by the title. Sapolsky writes, “This book … is both about the science of why there is no free will and the science of how we might best live once we accept that.” (10) But these do not appear to be scientific questions. Science, of course, is relevant; but that does not make free will a scientific question. Note that slavery is beyond a doubt morally wrong. The empirical facts about slavery are relevant, but this does not make the issue of the moral justifiability of slavery a scientific question. How we should adjust our attitudes and behavior in light of a belief in determinism, if we were to acquire such a belief, is definitely not a scientific question.
Surprisingly, in a book about free will, Sapolsky offers no definition of it (or, for that matter, determinism—or even moral responsibility!). He writes, “What is free will? Groan… I’ll do my best to mitigate the drag of this” (14). Although he does not present a full definition proper, it is clear that he holds that free will requires the falsity of determinism—by definition (not as a result of argumentation):
[To establish free will] [s]how me a neuron being a causeless cause in this total sense. …Show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behavior is independent of the sum of its biological past, and for the purposes of this book, you’ve demonstrated free will. (15)
This is problematic in various ways. First, it claims that “being a causeless cause” or “independent of the sum of its biological past” would be sufficient for a choice/action’s being an instance of free will. This is however surely false; pure randomness is incompatible with the control involved in free will. (In his discussion of quantum indeterminacy, Sapolsky is aware of this.) More plausibly, we should interpret him (here and throughout the book) as contending that, as a matter of definition or “meaning,” indeterminism is a necessary condition of free will. Note that the indeterminism of “causeless cause” or “independent of the sum of its biological past” is a very strong kind of indeterminism, leaving out the more appealing idea of not being fully determined by antecedent causes. (Sapolsky elides the distinction between causation and deterministic causation and thus does not consider indeterministic causal accounts of free will).
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Two analogies come to mind.
1) The Stone soup: Free will is the stone of the stone soup. But of course, the stone is totally not needed to make the soup, objectively speaking.
2)The traffic jam: Is a traffic jam the result of no free will because no one will a traffic jam such that one could reach a destination late? Or the result of too many free will, each wants to get to the destination sooner than later and takes the supposedly best route?