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Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky believes humans have no free will based on over four decades of studying humans and other primates.
“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky told the Los Angeles Times. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t here.”
He explains why he came to this conclusion in a new book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.
Sapolsky claims neurochemical influences that occurred milliseconds ago to centuries in the past are to blame for everything that we do.
Basically, according to Corinne Purtill of the Times, “If it’s impossible for any single neuron or any single brain to act without influence from factors beyond its control, Sapolsky argues, there can be no logical room for free will.”
If you reach out right now and pick up a pen, was even that insignificant action somehow preordained?
Yes, Sapolsky says, both in the book and to the countless students who have asked the same question during his office hours. What the student experiences as a decision to grab the pen is preceded by a jumble of competing impulses beyond his or her conscious control. Maybe their pique is heightened because they skipped lunch; maybe they’re subconsciously triggered by the professor’s resemblance to an irritating relative.
Then look at the forces that brought them to the professor’s office, feeling empowered to challenge a point. They’re more likely to have had parents who themselves were college educated, more likely to hail from an individualistic culture rather than a collective one. All of those influences subtly nudge behavior in predictable ways.
Gregg Caruso, a philosopher at SUNY Corning, agrees with him.
“Who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of praise and blame, punishment and reward,” said Caruso. “I am in agreement with Sapolsky that life without belief in free will is not only possible but preferable.”
Peter U. Tse, a Dartmouth neuroscientist, does not.
He says Sapolsky is a “wonderful explainer of complex phenomena,” but, he added, “a person can be both brilliant and utterly wrong.”
“Those who push the idea that we are nothing but deterministic biochemical puppets are responsible for enhancing psychological suffering and hopelessness in this world,” said Tse.