In the first chapter of this dense treatise by the Stanford philosopher, he clearly states that he aims to convince the reader the free will does not exist. In this he agree with a few other thinkers like Sam Harris, but not with the majority of philosophers, perhaps most notably Daniel Dennett.
“Saying that a gene determines when to generate its associated protein is like saying that the recipe decides to bake the cake that it codes for. Instead, genes are turned on and off by environment.”
“Nothing just got it into its head to be a causeless cause.”
There are two chapters devoted to chaos theory and the complex mathematics involved with that left me baffled and seemed somehow peripheral to the argument for or against the existence of free will. The chapter on Emergent Complexity and fractals, with its reliance on power law distributions also was beyond me. Ditto, the long discussion of quantum mechanics, entanglement of electrons over vast distances and traveling faster than the speed of light.
The more straightforward chapter comparing the altruism of atheists vs theists is enlightening and well worth reading before delving back into the neuronal circuitry of the sea slug and its relevance to human decision making, a chapter that I only partially understand.
The 44 pages devoted to the evolution of thinking about epilepsy, schizophrenia, PTSD, and autism are exceptionally informative and almost convinced me about the absence of free will.
In the penultimate chapter, Sapolsky makes a strong but hopelessly optimistic case for quarantine rather than punishment for all misdeeds, evoking Scandinavian models that largely avoid any attribution of blame for any criminal behaviour. Just after reading this, I read a long blurb in the New Yorker about a 15 year old mass school shooter who remains in jail 25 years later, deeply regretting that the voices in his head ordered him to do it, now with his schizophrenia under complete control.
In the final chapter Sapolsky acknowledges that he has suffered from depression intermittently for most of his adult life, and that, although he does not believe in free will, we may benefit from believing that it exists in some form. Almost as an addendum he then discusses the complex causes of obesity.
The real life examples of decision-making throughout this book are generally realistic, sometimes heart wrenching, and often humorous.
I was about to write that I admired the author’s vast knowledge about a vast array of subjects, when I realized that if he is right about determinism, it logically follows that admiration, guilt, responsibility and a lot of other engrained words such as good, evil, blame, liberty, ethics, justice, morality and equality, used in everyday language become meaningless. The same conclusion applies to praise for this book.
I have difficulty rating this book as it is thought-provoking and erudite; in some places it is impossible to understand, but in other places it is superb.
6/10
Thanks, The Atlantic, The Economist.
The Passionate Reader 