In his book Determined, the biologist Robert Sapolsky presents his case against free will, arguing that because our actions are fully determined by what’s happening in our brains, genes, and environment in the seconds, minutes, and years beforehand, there’s no room for any separate “I” to play a role. As I’ve written about before, this framing misses the fact that we are our brains – while a decision being fully determined by the firing of neurons precludes the influence of a disembodied “I” force (whatever that might look like), it’s still fully compatible with us having made the decision. By asking for free will to be something more than the physical interactions within our brains, Sapolsky turns it into a concept that’s fundamentally incongruous with the world we inhabit (and I think different from the average person’s interpretation), then argues against it simply by explaining the way our world works (which he’s quite adept at, both in this book and his others – it’s only in relation to free will that he loses the thread). That said, he does raise some points that help to draw lines around what we mean by free will. I found the passage below particularly interesting:
It’s 1922, and you’re presented with a hundred young adults destined to live conventional lives. You’re told that in about forty years, one of the hundred is going to diverge from that picture, becoming impulsive and socially inappropriate to a criminal extent. Here are blood samples from each of those people, check them out. And there’s no way to predict which person is above chance levels.
Determined, Robert Sapolsky
It’s 2022. Same cohort with, again, one person destined to go off the rails forty years hence. Again, here are their blood samples. This time, this century, you use them to sequence everyone’s genome. You discover that one individual has a mutation in a gene called MAPT, which codes for something in the brain called the tau protein. And as a result, you can accurately predict that it will be that person, because by age sixty, he will be showing the symptoms of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia.
Back to the 1922 cohort. The person in question has started shoplifting, threatening strangers, urinating in public. Why did he behave that way? Because he chose to do so.
Year 2022’s cohort, same unacceptable acts. Why will he have behaved that way? Because of a deterministic mutation in one gene.
According to the logic of the thinkers just quoted [who cited unpredictability as a driver of free will], the 1922 person’s behavior resulted from free will. Not “resulted from behavior we would erroneously attribute to free will.” It was free will. And in 2022, it is not free will. In this view, “free will” is what we call the biology that we don’t understand on a predictive level yet, and when we do understand it, it stops being free will. Not that it stops being mistaken for free will. It literally stops being. There is something wrong if an instance of free will exists only until there is a decrease in our ignorance. As the crucial point, our intuitions about free will certainly work that way, but free will itself can’t.
Sapolsky writes this passage in response to philosophers and scientists who claim that the unpredictability of human action is what makes it “free”. His point against them is compelling, and I agree with it – any framework of free will needs to be able to stand up to differing levels of knowledge, and unpredictability as a source of free will does not. If we have free will, we must continue to have it even in a situation where all drivers of action, down to the firings of individual neurons, are known.
Beyond that, though, this passage is interesting because in the situation he presents it does seem as though the person’s actions are not theirs and are instead a product of their dementia. We can imagine plaques eroding parts of their brain and this erosion directly causing the unacceptable acts, in a way that leaves no room for the person’s conscious choice. The ease with which we can remove free will from the equation in this case raises the concern that it may remain elusive across a wider range of scenarios.
Let’s say we replace “a single gene causing dementia” in the above with “a combination of genes that together present an increased disposition toward violence”. This same person later exhibits a tendency to threaten strangers. Are they doing so “freely”? The act certainly seems more free than when done by the person with dementia. Instead of plaques directly causing the actions, the picture is now of genes exerting an influence that’s more intertwined with this person’s “core” self. The person, given their disposition, is making the decision to utter these threats. While this person has a different nature than you or me, the person they are is still them. We can imagine being this person and experiencing a powerful rush of anger at the person who cut in front of them in the checkout line. Some thoughts in the back of their head interject that it’s wrong to make threats and has led to trouble before, but in the front of their mind the anger is coursing, and all that part of their mind wants to do is lash out.
One of these sides will win – and to Sapolsky’s point, it will win because of the way the past has unfolded, with genes and environment driving the development (and relative strength) of the different sides. However, from another perspective it is exactly this tug-of-war between the various parts of ourselves that constitutes our freedom to choose! This hypothetical person is both the angry front of their mind and the more rational back of it, just as a runner who pushes on for another mile is both the motivated and tired parts of their brain and the shopper who buys a candy bar is both the healthy and hungry parts. When our brain makes decisions, we make decisions – and when these decisions are due to histories of genes and environment, we are constituted by those same histories.
In the case of the person with dementia, the tug-of-war between different sides can no longer take place due to the deterioration of their brain. This leaves a person without the capacity to choose – i.e., without a mind capable of examining and evaluating alternative options – and accordingly means they do not have the same degree of free will (or said differently, there’s not the same degree of person present to exert will).Sapolsky paints a comprehensive picture in Determined of how various factors across different time horizons come together to determine a person’s actions. As he examines the influences of genes, environment, and brain chemistry, he makes clear that each action has a cause, and that the roots of these causes stretch far back into our evolutionary history. In his view, these direct linkages leave no room for an “I” – it’s simply mechanistic actions and reactions all the way down. In taking this view he falls victim to the same trap as dualists looking for an “I” outside the deterministic system. Sapolsky accepts both determinism and the existence of selves (he’s not arguing there’s no ”you”, just that you do not have free will), then argues that these selves have no power because they exist within the confines of the deterministic world. However, given these premises, the only place for selves to exist is within the determinism – and once they’re in, free will follows. In other words, “I wrote this post because I chose to” and “this post was written because environmental and genetic factors led to a brain disposed to write it” are synonymous.