Questioning the self: Scientist doesn’t believe in free will (feel free to disagree)

By HOPE REESE

NEW YORK: There is no free will, according to Robert Sapolsky, a biologist and neurologist at Stanford University and a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. Dr. Sapolsky worked for decades as a field primatologist before turning to neuroscience, and he has spent his career investigating behavior across the animal kingdom and writing about it in books including “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst” and “Monkeyluv, and Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals.”

In his latest book, “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will,” Dr. Sapolsky confronts and refutes the biological and philosophical arguments for free will. He contends that we are not free agents, but that biology, hormones, childhood, and life circumstances coalesce to produce actions that we merely feel were ours to choose.

It’s a provocative claim, he concedes, but he would be content if readers simply began to question the belief, which is embedded in our cultural conversation. Getting rid of free will “completely strikes at our sense of identity and autonomy and where we get meaning from,” Dr. Sapolsky said, and this makes the idea particularly hard to shake.

There are major implications, he notes: Absent free will, no one should be held responsible for their behavior, good or bad. Dr. Sapolsky sees this as “liberating” for most people, for whom “life has been about being blamed and punished and deprived and ignored for things they have no control over.”

He spoke in a series of interviews about the challenges that free will presents and how he stays motivated without it. These conversations were condensed for clarity. To most people, free will means being in charge of our actions. What’s wrong with that outlook? Sapolsky says that it’s a useless definition. “When most people think they’re discerning free will, what they mean is somebody intended to do what they did: Something has just happened; somebody pulled the trigger. They understood the consequences and knew that alternative behaviors were available.

But that doesn’t remotely begin to touch it, because you’ve got to ask: Where did that intent come from? That’s what happened a minute before, in the years before, and everything in between.” He goes on to say, “For that sort of free will to exist, it would have to function on a biological level completely independently of the history of that organism. You would be able to identify the neurons that caused a particular behavior, and it wouldn’t matter what any other neuron in the brain was doing, what the environment was, what the person’s hormone levels were, what culture they were brought up in. Show me that those neurons would do the exact same thing with all these other things changed, and you’ve proven free will to me.”

What about something bigger, like choosing where to go to college? Sapolsky says that you ask, “Why did you pick this one?” And the person says, “I’ve learned that I do better in smaller classes.” Or, “They have an amazing party scene.” At any meaningful juncture, we’re making decisions based on our tastes and predilections and values and character. And you have to ask: Where did they come from? Neuroscience is getting really good at two levels of stuff. One is understanding what a particular part of the brain does, based on techniques like neuroimaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation.