One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of
Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of
decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an
argument with profound consequences
Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do
good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We
may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates
the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that
doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his
argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way,
delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is
some separate self telling our biology what to do.
Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how
consciousness works--the tight weave between reason and emotion and
between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one,
Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them
out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science
and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder
shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no
small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are
somebody's "fault"; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were
a sign of demonic possession. Yet, as he acknowledges, it's very hard,
and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and
to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life
beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around
punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky
argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no
free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going
to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead,
it will make for a much more humane world.
