"On that “useful”: what’s your opinion of Sapolsky’s belief that there is no such thing as free will, that “we are the outcomes of the sheer random, good and bad biological luck that each of us has stumbled into,” that “all we are is the sum, nothing more or less, of what our biology and its interactions with the environment have been.”
COMMENT:
If anyone is interested in seeking self-understanding, self-help, or self-control, as related to emotions or habits they deem out of control or counter-productive, it would be logically in consistent to turn to *any* book, theoretical psychologist, philosopher, or scientific professional, that denies free will. The assumption that one carries with them when turning to such self-help resources is that there is something they can actually do about the problem; that is, they can direct their *will* to addressing the problem. That assumption, of course, requires a commitment to free will. Other than clinical psychologists offering cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)—who make their living convincing people that they can change their behavioral patterns—the academic community addressing the issue of free will is turning more and more in the direction of denial. The reason is remarkably simple: The science of human nature encompasses three fundamental disciplines: genetics, neuroscience, and psychology, with psychology itself being dependent on the materialist aspects of genetics and neuroscience for its underlying scientific status. Genetics is committed to the view that *at bottom* human behavior is genetically based, or more broadly based upon the processes associated with molecular biology and biochemistry. Neuroscience is based upon the structure and processes of the brain—which itself a product of genetic development. Neuroscience is committed to the view that all of human experience can be proximately explained by brain processes, without need for anything transcendent. (Crick’s Astonishing Hypothesis) Both genetics and neuroscience are classically deterministic; free will is transcendent. Ergo, free will must be an illusion.
Robert Sapolsky is representative of that trend. Here is a review of Sapolsky's 2017 book, *Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.*
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/09/behave-by-robert-sapolsky-review“More thorny is the point at which he comes to address the question of individual choice and responsibility. For nearly 600 pages, barring the odd mention of the “cognitive” aspects of human action, Sapolsky sidelines the question of what place conscious reasoning has in determining behaviour, among all the neurochemical, hormonal, developmental and evolutionary factors he has been discussing. Indeed, sometimes he writes as though it has no place at all, as when he asks what sensory input “triggered the nervous system to produce that behaviour”. He eventually nails his colours to the mast of strict determinism: every human action is inescapably caused by preceding events in the world, including events in the brain. So there can be no such thing as free will. (It follows, of course, that social systems such as that of criminal justice must be completely overhauled, as philosophers such as Ted Honderich have long suggested.) You think you can freely choose to do one thing or another? Forget it, Sapolsky says.”
COMMENT:
Again, if you want to understand your innate human nature, and more specifically what you *might* be able to do, as a cognitive and rational human agent, to control your anger, and other emotions, you should avoid views like the above like the plague. According to such views (as noted above), there is no YOU, as an autonomous agent able to control your own life and destiny through reason and choices, and thus no *free will* that transcends the processes of the material brain as acted upon by the environment. So, apparently you can do no more than just sit back and let your life flow in the direction that (hopefully) makes you feel more pleasure than pain; with no thought, hard choices, or moral responsibility required. You only engage in the false pretention that *you* as a conscious agent exist, and are in charge of your life.
As noted, this has now become the dominant view in psychology, neuroscience and philosophy. Back in 2007, psychologist Edward F. Kelly, and his co-writers, stated the tension between the views of William James and David Hume as follows:
“The self was absolutely central to the psychology of William James (Leary, 1990). In the *Principles* (1890b) he says: "The universal conscious fact is not 'feelings and thoughts exist' but 'I think' and 'I feel.' No psychology. . . can questions the *existence* of personal selves. The worst a psychology can do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as to rob them of their worth" (Vol. 1, p. 226). The self is something the presence of which we can feel almost constantly at the innermost subjective pole of our experience. Its ultimate origins remain mysterious . . .”
“This is essentially James' answer to Hume, who had famously declared that upon looking within he could only find particular sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts, and never his "self." But the dominant position in contemporary psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy derives from Hume, not from James. Particularly with the recent rise of connectionism and dynamic systems theory, our experience of ourselves as causally effective agents has come increasingly to be portrayed as mere illusion, with consciousness itself at best a causally ineffectual by-product of the grinding of our neural machinery. There is in reality nobody in charge, no executive. We are nothing but self-organizing packs of neurons. "Subjectless processes" do all the work. Pronouncements of this general type abound, for example, in recent books and papers by prominent figures such as the Churchlands, Francis Crick, Daniel Dennett, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Gerald Edelman, Walter Freeman, Douglas Hofstadter, Steven Pinker, and numerous others.” (Kelly & Kelly, *Irreducible Mind* (2007) p. 640]
Now, numerous others could be added to the above list, including Harvard psychologist, Daniel Wegner (*The Illusion of Free Will*), and Sapolsky. The conclusion of the Kelly book is also worth quoting:
“We believe that these extraordinary mainstream conclusions, so deeply at odds with the most fundamental deliverances of everyday experience, result from correctly perceiving what are in fact necessary consequences of the classical materialist-monist premises from which practically all of contemporary psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy derive. We further contend that disastrous consequences of this magnitude ought to be recognized by everybody for what they really are, a *reductio ad absurdum* of those materialist-monist premises themselves. The only possible justification for clinging to results so monstrous must be the belief that there is no alternative, no scientifically legitimate way of avoiding them. But we have clearly shown, we submit, that this belief is mistaken.” (Ibid. p. 641)
Just what Kelly & Co actually demonstrated in their book as related to the existence of a self and free will, is controversial, but certainly worth the read. (all 800 pages) I am less interested in the merits of their view (and other similar ‘dualist’ views of mind) than the lack of evidence for the dominant materialist view, and its consequences to human individuals and society.
Remember when Carl Sagan preached that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?” (Carl Sagan, *The Demon-Haunted World*) What could possibly be a more ‘extraordinary claim’ than the denial of human self, and the self’s basic free will? Both the self and free will represent the empirical reality of all our cognitive conscious experience, and represent the foundation of all deliberative human action. The assumption of our individual selfhood, and free will is what makes life meaningful (by whatever definition of meaning you choose) and provides the power in which to change for the better (or worse) one’s life, and worldview. (After all, it was our conscious will in thought and action that enabled us to get out of Mormonism, which prior to such self-reflection imprisoned us under both a cognitive and environmental stranglehold!)
It is also the basis for expressing one’s ideas, whether orally, on the internet, or even the motivation in writing provocative books denying freewill. It is also the entire basis for secular humanism, which fundamentally requires the ability to change secular society for the better by deliberative thoughts and actions embracing human rights and equality. It is the basis for all law, both legal and moral. So, denying selves and free will is serious business.
Notwithstanding, Sapolsky, and others like him, dismiss free will as an illusion to be discarded without serious thought or concern. This is the ‘scientific’ reality that is presented in virtually all standard philosophy and psychology university classes throughout the world. It might be worth pausing to ask an important question: Is this really what we want our universities to teach our impressionable 18-year-olds; that free will is an illusion and therefore that personal achievement, personal responsibility, and the commitment to improving human society should *not* be concerns of which they have any control? But that is a topic for another day.
So, with this extraordinary claim denying free will, what is the extraordinary evidence? Answer, there is none. Take note: Free will, or if you prefer, the *feeling* of free will, is a product of MIND, that is, one’s subjective mental life. As such, it relates to the cognitive *mental* capacities of each individual human being, whatever such capacities are. We might ask, 'What is the scientific theory (like Newtonian mechanics; Quantum Mechanics, or General Relativity) that systemizes, conceptually or mathematically, the rational and creative capacities and processes of the human mind (which capacities are evidenced by the scientific method itself), such that we can confidently infer free will to be an illusion?' There is none. What is the scientific theory that equates the nearly infinite rational and creative capacities of mind with some well-established systematic processes of the brain? (e.g. ‘Connectionism’) Again, there is none. There is, of course, a great deal of evidence for mind-brain correlations, such that thoughts and actions are to some extent correlated with brain events. Yet, this correlation is extremely limited, often non-specific, and highly speculative in its details. There is certainly no evidence—much less extraordinary evidence—from neuroscience and/or psychology, to infer that the overwhelmingly powerful intuition of free will is illusory. (I say this having read the philosophical, psychological, and neurological arguments in great detail.)
Thankfully, there is a minority view within modern neuroscience that is becoming more and more receptive to the idea that mind represents a genuine separate reality, often identified as an *emergent* active property of the brain. This property of mind is often said to include the capacity of recursive, mental causation in the context of a complex brain-mind ‘complex adaptive system.’ Although controversial still, such a view seems to me to be far more reasonable given the fact that our minds do cause physical events daily, for example, the movement of our bodies. Once mind is acknowledged as a reality over and above mere physical brain functions, with causal capacities in its own right, free will is much easier to accommodate, making the denial of free will on materialist grounds seem misguided, unnecessary, and in fact rather silly.
Here is a quote from neuroscientist, Paul L. Nunez:
“In scientific fields, emergence is a process whereby larger-scale entities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities that themselves do not exhibit the large-scale properties. For example, life is normally perceived as an emergent property of the interacting molecules of biochemistry, which, in turn, reflect interactions among elementary particles. Higher brain functions may then be pictured as the next hierarchical step up from life. That is, most scientists view human behavior, various mental functions, and consciousness itself as properties that somehow emerge from the underlying brain networks. An essential property of brains, as opposed to some simpler versions of complex systems, is that emergent phenomena can act on lower levels, causing small-scale changes through downward causation. The top-down actions of animal brains on behavior are essentially defining features of the label "brain." Human *free will* seems to qualify as a pre-eminent example of top-down actions of large-scale systems on smaller-scale behavioral systems.”
(Paul L. Nunez, *The New Science of Consciousness: Exploring the complexity of Brain, Mind, and Self*(2016) p. 250)
We live in a time when education in the context of LGBTQ rights is front and center, not only in the lower grades, but on the high school level. Recently AP Psychology has become an issue in this same context. Although I have no qualms about high school students being taught the complexities associated with gender identity—after all, they already see this daily in their everyday lives. But, I *do* have a problem with mainstream theoretical psychology promoting in the name of science widespread falsehoods about human nature based upon loose ‘theories’ or ‘just-so stories’ involving human evolution. This includes broad, unsubstantiated statements like the following uninformed response to your query:
“I think he's [Sapolsky] proved that the room for free will shrinks as science proceeds. Ever more mysteries of human behavior turn out to be mechanistically explicable and hence no longer a result of volition. Essentially, it's the same argument as ‘the God of the Gaps.’ As science uncovers new facts and mechanisms, free will recedes further into the recesses of the brain.”
No statement could be further from the truth. One only needs to look at the failures of strong AI after many decades, and the intractable nature of the ‘frame problem,’ to see that science is NOT moving closer to explaining human cognition in solely mechanistic terms. When you see a robot performing as a human, simultaneously within multiple comparative domains of human cognition, you will know that brain science has finally arrived. So far, AI is not even close. Other than AI, all denials of free will are much more theoretical (and rhetorical) than they are scientific.
Regarding the famous ‘god of the gaps’ objection to theology, the actual situation in cognitive neuroscience is quite the reverse. Neuroscience tends to minimize the profound gaps in brain science’s ability to explain the vast complexities and capacities of human cognition, while nonetheless dogmatically announcing that free will “must be” an illusion. Since many other gaps of science have been filed, such skeptics assume and implicitly argue—as if the evidence was already in—that such gaps can already be deemed filled pursuant to a mere materialist assumption. So much for Sagan's demand for extraordinary evidence! As noted above, science has made absolutely NO genuine scientific progress in establishing the illusory nature of free will. (And that includes the famous Libet studies, and their follow-up counterparts!)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2942748/pdf/acp-06-047.pdf“The notion that free will is an illusion has achieved such wide acceptance among philosophers and neuroscientists that it seems to be acquiring the status of dogma. Nonetheless, research in this area continues, and this review offers a new analysis of the design limitations and data interpretations of free-will experiments. This review presents 12 categories of questionable conclusions that some scholars use to promote the idea that free will is an illusion.”
Our daily human experience reveals unquestionably that whatever influences underlie our decision-making, human free will transcends the classic nature-nurture (brain-environment) dichotomy of mainstream psychology. No doubt, the cards of Gary Gilmore were stacked against him, perhaps making his fate worthy of some degree of sympathy or empathy. Notwithstanding, the choices underlying his actions were his alone, such that arguably *he could have done otherwise* just as we all did in leaving Mormonism when the cards were stacked against us.
Anyway, that is my take, for what it's worth.