Book Review: Determined, by Robert Sapolsky
An Unfortunate Misfire in the Debate Over Free Will
So… do we have free will or not?
On the face of it, it seems intuitively obvious that we actively make choices. I chose what to eat for lunch today (salami sandwich). I chose what TV show to watch while I ate it (Kim’s Convenience). I chose which necktie to wear when I went to work (the one my daughter made for me for my birthday). At least, I think I made those choices.
The problem is, many things that we used to think were obviously true have turned out not to be true. We used to think that the sun revolved around the Earth. We used to think that tomatoes were poisonous. We used to think that parachute pants looked good. What else might there be that we currently think is obviously true but will later turn out to be wrong?
According to some scientists and philosophers, the notion that we choose our actions should be added to that list. In my own field (psychology), the two biggest schools of thought in the early Twentieth Century prominently feature a denial of free will. Among the psychoanalysts, we had Freud claiming that our conscious choice is an illusion, because our decisions are in reality the product of unconscious forces that we can neither perceive nor control. And among the behaviorists we had Skinner, arguing that conscious choice is an illusion, because our decisions are in reality the product of environmental stimuli and principles of conditioning.
It was not until the rise of humanistic and existential psychology that we had strong representation for those who believe that humans possess responsible moral agency.
In the debate over free will, there are three major positions:
1. Determinism is the idea that all of our actions are events, caused by other events, with no free choices happening in the chain of causality.
2. Libertarianism involves voting for candidates who promise to shrink the government, and… Just kidding. The Libertarian Party and philosophical libertarianism are not the same thing. In the debate over free will, libertarianism is the denial that anything causes our choices. Our actions are self-determined, independent of any mental or physical forces pushing us around.
3. For those who don’t like the all-or-nothing approach, we have compatibilism, which holds that choice and causality both exist in one form or another (there are variations on all three of these positions, with lots of arguing amongst themselves). Compatibilism is also sometimes called “soft determinism,” with “hard determinism” referring to the belief that free will absolutely does not exist.
Determined is an attempt by Stanford University biologist Robert Sapolsky to convince the reader that science and rational thinking all align on the side of hard determinism. He acknowledges that this might be an impossible task for most readers, as hard determinism flies in the face of everyday experience and what seems like common sense, and he occasionally moderates his ambition, claiming that the book will be a success if it at least convinces the reader “that there is much less free will than generally assumed when it really matters” (p. 6). Sapolsky writes in varying tones, at some points conveying scientific and philosophical arguments with clarity and precision, and at other points indulging in profanity, sneering, name-calling, and a casual disregard for basic sentence structure. Some readers might find that the combination makes Sapolsky come across as both brilliant and approachable; I found it juvenile and irritating.
The book is organized into three sections. In the first four chapters, Sapolsky presents his argument in support of determinism. He provides here his definitions of freedom and determinism, lays out his central understanding of why humans do what we do, and takes readers on a tour of multiple lines of scientific research that support his claims.
The next section is about refuting alternative views. Sapolsky largely ignores the libertarian position, and directs the bulk of his argument against compatibilist theories. In chapters five and six Sapolsky deals with the idea that free will can be found in chaos theory.
Seven and eight are about emergence (the notion that the complexity of systems like our brains can give rise to higher-level functions like free will). This middle part of the book then concludes with chapters nine and ten, in which Sapolsky takes on the claim that freedom exists because of quantum indeterminacy.
The final five chapters, comprising the third major division of the book, concern the implications of the argument; the “so what” of determinism versus free will. In chapter eleven, Sapolsky addresses the argument that, if we stop believing in free will, we might lose all moral sense and run amok.
Chapter twelve involves the question of change. Specifically, if nothing can be chosen, does that make change impossible? Chapters thirteen and fourteen deal with moral agency: if all behavior is determined, does that make evil actions blameless? Sapolsky bites the philosophical bullet and says yes. Determinism eliminates moral blame and replaces it with scientific understanding of what causes bad behavior and how to make it less likely. In chapter thirteen, he traces the history of attitudes toward mental illness, and how removing responsibility for “insanity” has made the world a better place. In chapter fourteen, the author proposes radical reformations of the criminal justice system, away from retribution and toward a “quarantine” model of indefinite incarceration until the perpetrator is no longer a danger to the community. Sapolsky then wraps it up with a discussion of what this looks and feels like on a personal level in the final chapter.
What the Book Does Well
Sapolsky is a biologist, and so strives to keep his claims grounded in science. In advancing his argument, he draws from his own work on the behavior of baboons, presents relevant advances in neuroscience, and takes readers on a whirlwind tour of experimental psychology. He is thorough in citing his sources when talking about research, and (speaking as a psychology professor) I found his coverage of a wide range of psychological findings greatly enjoyable and informative for those who want to dive into the field. Even those who want to hold to a compatibilist or libertarian position will be forced to admit that there is a lot of evidence that our actions are a lot less free than we might think.
The parts of the book that I found to contain Sapolski’s strongest arguments were when he makes the case against chaos theory and quantum physics as strongholds for free will. To begin with, despite the name, chaos theory is in fact itself rigidly deterministic, with small differences in initial states in a system leading to large differences later on, but all through a series of cause-and-effect events. And when it comes to quantum indeterminacy, there is no reason to believe that quantum effects at the micro level will cause macro-level outcomes. But the biggest problem here for free will is that indeterminacy does not give us agency, only randomness (and nobody actually argues that our free will is a mindless roll of the dice). Both chaos and quantum miss the point in the debate, and Sapolsky does well to point out the central flaws that allow us to dismiss both.
What the Book Does Badly
Despite the good points, when Sapolsky fails, he fails hard. There are weak spots in the book that are very weak indeed.
To begin with, when Sapolsky defines free will, he provides a definition that I have never seen any advocate of free will endorse. Ever. Sapolsky argues that our behaviors are the result of an unbroken chain of caused events, down to the electrochemical firing of each neuron in our brains. In order for free will to be a real thing, he says, there has to be a break in that chain where a neuron fires for absolutely no reason whatsoever, so that the brain activity would look something like this:
Neuron – Neuron – Neuron – Magical Uncaused Pixie Dust Neuron – Neuron – Neuron
“Show me,” Sapolksy demands, “a neuron being a causeless cause in this total sense… and for the purposes of this book, you’ve demonstrated free will” (p. 15).
I humbly request that a reader look through the works of those philosophers who support free will, and find for me one single person who says that this is how free will works. It is a basic principle that, if you are going to argue against someone’s position, your first step is to be able to present your opponent’s argument well enough that your opponent would agree with your characterization. And at this, Sapolksy fails, setting up a compatibilist strawman.
The failure continues when Sapolsky argues against emergence in chapter eight. Emergence is the belief (typically compatibilist in nature) that our brains are made up of neurons, and that neurons operate according to cause-and-effect forces just like everything else. However, the neurons are interlinked in an immensely-complex system, and when simple elements are arranged into complex systems, they behave differently than the simple elements. To use a non-brain example, hydrogen is not wet. Oxygen is not wet. Combine hydrogen and oxygen into water, and it is wet. A single water molecule is not hard, but a block of frozen water is hard. You cannot predict the behavior of a storm by looking at a single drop of rain. At the level of living things, you can study a single ant all day, but none of that will allow you to understand anything about ants linking their bodies together to form a bridge. Study a single human, and you cannot describe or predict mass social movements.
In the case of our brains, the emergence argument is that the complexity of our neural system is such that it gains characteristics that cannot be seen in a single neuron. One such characteristic is the ability to be self-reflexive, the brain monitoring its own processes in feedback loops. Another is self-control, the ability to override and alter behavior processes already underway. What this does for the free will argument is to say that emergent properties can produce top-down causes that influence the simple units that make up the system. You cannot understand mass social movements by looking at one person, but social movements definitely shape the behavior of individual people. From this perspective, Sapolsky’s demand for an uncaused neuron is him looking for freedom in the wrong place; choice happens at the system level, not the individual neuron level.
Sapolsky’s counter-argument is that even if complex neural systems are complex, they are still neurons. And neurons act like neurons. I found that to be a very weak counterargument, and was deeply disappointed with that chapter. Like his definition of free will, Sapolsky finds himself arguing against positions that nobody actually holds. No compatibilist believes that neurons stop being neuron-like when they link up with other neurons.
Finally, I worry that readers – especially those who do not have a solid grounding in neuroscience – might find themselves overwhelmed by the torrent of scientific studies that Sapolsky marshals in favor of determinism, one after another after another. He presents himself as building a cumulative case, but I am put in mind of the “house of cards” scene in the movie My Cousin Vinnie: each study looks like a solid piece of evidence against free will, but Sapolsky himself admits that each one does not actually prove determinism. His argument is more like someone saying: “Here are a hundred studies that don’t prove determinism, but there’s a hundred of them!”
Conclusion
When scientists venture out of their area of specialization, the results are often cringe-inducing. I can tell stories of psychologists who are brilliant researchers in their area, but they got too big for their britches and they started thinking that their success in psychology qualifies them to weigh in on politics, economics, history, philosophy, or theology. And they ended up looking like bumbling amateurs.
Sapolsky is a top-notch biologist, and I will never speak ill of his research on baboons. But finishing my read-through of Determined left me unsatisfied. Surely, I thought, there must be better arguments than this. Fortunately, there are (and don’t call me Shirley). My recommendation for readers is that you give Determined a miss and read the works of actual experts in the philosophical arguments on free will. The authors of the chapters in Moral Psychology, Volume Four: Free Will and Responsibility, for example, do a much better job of discussing the implications of neuroscientific findings for and against the idea of free will. For those who want a theologically-informed discussion, the authors of Whatever Happened to the Soul do a good job presenting emergence and top-down causation within a Christian context.
One of the best things that I got from Sapolsky’s book, in fact, was a list of the people he tries to argue against. Now I have a list of the next batch of scholars for me to look up as I continue to navigate my way through this evergreen philosophical problem.