by David Kordahl

A few months ago, the Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky released Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. It’s a book whose thesis is as easy to state as it is hard to accept. Sapolsky argues that since our actions result from nothing more than one event following another, no one really deserves praise or blame for anything they do. Our actions are determined by physical events in the physical brain, tightly linked in a causal chain that none of us is able to control any more than anyone else. Our attitudes about all sorts of everyday issues, from financial compensation to prison sentencing, should be reformed in the light of this truth.

Sapolsky is a witty writer, but notions of agency are so deeply baked into our usual way of talking that he frequently has to catch himself. (From a footnote: “I have to try to go through the same thinking process that this whole book is about to arrive at any thoughts about [Bruno] Bettelheim other than that he was a sick, sadistic fuck.”) While one might turn to Determined for lively discussions about current debates in neuroscience, philosophers who have criticized the book point out that there’s nothing really new in his basic assertion, besides the new details.

Of course, filling in the details can be important for establishing plausibility. But the problem with determinism—at least for scientists since the time of Laplace—isn’t that the idea seems implausible. The problem is that even if determinism is plausible, it’s not clear what the consequences of this realization should be. Read more »