Free Will and the Sapolsky Paradox
When you decide after careful deliberation that free will does not exist, you demonstrate that it does exist. That is the Sapolsky paradox, named after neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, who argues against free will in his new book Determined. This image of Sapolsky comes from a conversation I recorded with him, see link here.
November 5, 2023. Not free will again! Yeesh! Is there really more to say about it? Yes, there is, and I suspect there always will be, just as there will always be more to say about what quantum mechanics means and whether God exists.
I’m writing about free will now because I just read Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, in which neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky argues that free will does not exist. I also just talked to Sapolsky via zoom in front of a live online audience.
And I’ve decided that Sapolsky embodies a paradox: when you decide free will does not exist because you have weighed arguments for and against it, you prove free will exists.
To explain the Sapolsky paradox, I need to spell out what I mean by free will: Free will is your capacity to discern different possible paths; weigh their pros and cons; and choose one path because of your deliberations. I believe in free will because I exercise this capacity now and then, for example, when I write a column like this one. I see others exercising the same capacity--including free-will deniers like Sapolsky.
That’s not to say I don’t like Sapolsky’s book. In fact, I love it. Sapolsky documents brilliantly, wittily, entertainingly the many, many ways in which biology and circumstance undermine our decision-making capacity. Our choices, Sapolsky shows, are rarely as rational, let alone free, as we think they are.
But Sapolsky hasn’t proved that free will is illusory; he has merely confirmed that it exists on a sliding scale. My ability to make good decisions—good for me and, ideally, others—varies from hour to hour, day to day, year to year. I had zero free will when I was drooling in my crib, I will have zero when I’m drooling in a nursing home.
Free will also varies enormously across populations. White male professors like Sapolsky and me have more choices on average than, say, a black American man with schizophrenia or a Palestinian woman in Gaza. Free will depends on factors ranging from genes to geopolitics.
Okay, back to the Sapolsky paradox: Sapolsky has weighed the arguments for and against free will and has concluded that it does not exist. Sapolsky’s anti-free-will book is thus a spectacular demonstration, and product, of Sapolsky’s own free will.
If you read Sapolsky’s book and end up agreeing with him, that is evidence that you possess free will as I define it above. If you decide that Sapolsky is wrong after reading the new pro-free-will book by neurobiologist Kevin Mitchell, that is also evidence that you possess free will. Any choice resulting from conscious deliberation demonstrates free will. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Sapolsky might respond that belief or disbelief in free will never stems solely from rational deliberation. He traces his disbelief to a crisis he underwent when he was 14, after which he no longer believed in free will or God.
Sapolsky also reveals, in a remarkable footnote near the end of his book, that he has been plagued throughout his life by depression, which makes the world seem ugly and meaningless. Sapolsky suggests that depression reveals the world as it truly is. But does it? In my experience, depression rubs your face in the ugliness of existence while blinding you to the beauty.
Here’s my point: If Sapolsky rejects free will because of rational deliberation, then he demonstrates that he possesses free will. If he rejects free will because he is prone to depression, then we can reject his stance as subjective and unscientific. Again, free will wins either way.
I’ve overstated the case for free will a bit. Science, I’m guessing, will never prove or disprove free will once and for all. Scientists have no idea how physical processes engender consciousness, which is a prerequisite for free will. That’s my takeaway from the terrific new book by physics writer George Musser, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Secrets of the Universe.
There are days when I have a hard time believing in the human capacity for making conscious, rational choices. Humanity often seems wholly under the sway of rage, terror, greed, ideological fervor. I nonetheless cling to free will because it helps me make sense of the world, and of my own life. I also fear that disbelief in free will, in our capacity for making good choices, will foster fatalism and despair when we can least afford it.
A final point. Some determinists are jerks, who cite biology to justify, say, sexual and racial inequality. [See Postscript.] Far from being a jerk, Sapolsky is a compassionate social-justice warrior. He argues persuasively, movingly, that luck is the primary difference between white male professors and, say, people in prison. We need to change the world, he says, so good luck is distributed more fairly; and when people do bad things, we need to be more forgiving.
We’re more likely to achieve these goals, Sapolsky contends, if we stop believing in free will. But here’s another twist to the Sapolsky paradox: In the just, gentle world that Sapolsky envisions, everyone will have more free will, even if no one believes in it.
Postscript: Tom Clark of naturalism.org (who reviews Sapolsky’s book here) asked me on Facebook for an example of a jerky determinist. I named political scientist Charles Murray, who has argued for decades that racial and sexual inequality stem at least in part from genetic differences. Murray aired his views on the podcast of free-will denier Sam Harris in 2017. See Ezra Klein’s commentary on the episode here.
Further Reading:
You can watch my talk with Sapolsky here.
See my followup column, Free Will and the Could-You-Have-Chosen-Otherwise Gambit.
Theories of Consciousness, Gaza and My Cognitive Dissonance
My Slam-Dunk Arguments for Free Will
Entropy, Meaninglessness and Miracles
The Dark Matter Inside Our Heads
The Brouhaha Over Consciousness and “Pseudoscience”
For more on free will, consciousness, morality and other mysteries of mind, see my free online books My Quantum Experiment and Mind Body Problems.
See also science journalist Dan Falk’s smart take in Nautilus on the books by Sapolsky and Kevin Mitchell.