This month The most important, Physicist Stephen M. Barr examines the book by primatologist and Stanford professor of neurology Robert M. Sapolsky Determined: A science of life without free will (Penguin 2023).
Barr, author of Modern physics and ancient belief (Univ. of Notre Dame Press 2003) praises Sapolsky’s book as well-written and informative with regard to neuroscience.
But then he continues:
However, the book suffers from a serious flaw: it attempts to refute the reality of free will without having a sufficiently clear idea of what free will is, or at least what it is traditionally understood to mean. There is no mention in the text of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, or the other great philosophers who have shaped two millennia of thought on the subject.
Stephen M. Barr, “Feel Free,” First Things, August 2024
Sapolsky believes – unlike them – that every aspect of human thought and decision-making is governed by physical laws. In particular, says Barr, he does not seem to understand the role of reason:
According to Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, it is precisely reason that characterizes the human will and makes it “free.” In contrast, according to Thomas Aquinas, other animals do not have such an ability: “The sheep, seeing the wolf, judges that it must be avoided, and this is based on a natural and not a free judgment, for it judges not by reason but by natural instinct.”
Barr, “Feel Free”
They (and Barr) do not mean that non-rational factors do not play a role in human decisions, but that people Also have reason and other animals do not:
A crucial point is that human reason is open to general abstract truths, both speculative and moral. It could not be open to such truths that lie above it if it were under the complete control of factors that lie below it, such as physical and chemical forces, sensations, emotions, and the like. We must be free in this respect, otherwise we could not be rational. The great 20th-century mathematician Hermann Weyl observed that even in the realm of mathematics, “there must be freedom in the theoretical act of affirmation and negation. When I conclude that 2 + 2 = 4, the judgment is not imposed on me by blind natural causality.” Of course, a machine blindly following an algorithm might perform correct calculations, such as 2 + 2 = 4, but it does not recognize mathematical truth; rather, its programmer did. The machine could just as easily have been programmed to output 2 + 2 = 17 and not have noticed. A machine cannot grasp the meaning of abstract statements, let alone judge their truth.
Barr, “Feel Free”
To show that there is no free will, Sapolsky focuses on arguments from neuroscience and physics. The problem is that neuroscience – despite the hopes of many physicalists – not prove. And physically he is also entering tricky territory, says Barr, a physicist:
Many leading physicists and philosophers have expressed doubts or denied that physical mechanisms can provide an explanation for consciousness even in principle – physicists Schrödinger, Wigner, Dyson, Linde and Witten, and philosophers Chalmers, Kripke and Nagel, to name just a few of the most famous. And since consciousness is presumably a prerequisite for free will, we cannot hope to understand the latter without understanding the former.
Barr, “Feel Free”
Sapolsky apparently dismisses the question of consciousness as “ridiculous,” but that doesn’t make something so fundamental go away. In fact, the ongoing attempt to explain away intangible realities like the human mind leads to many clumsy breakdowns, like this one:
Sapolsky does try to answer the question of how we change our minds, but he doesn’t get any further than talking about how sea snails change their behavior when they repeatedly respond to an electric shock to their tail, and how rats change their behavior when they are trained according to Pavlov’s principles. Really? Can this even begin to explain the highest powers of the human mind?
Barr, “Feel Free”
Of course, a flood of facts about such research leads us away from asking about higher powers that pose a challenge. And indeed, many readers might like that. The spirit of moral responsibility is calmed, if not expelled, by filling the air with data on unrelated questions.
Barr’s summary judgment comes in the form of a quote from GK Chesterton (1874–1936):
120 years ago, GK Chesterton wrote an essay responding to a materialist-determinist of his time named Robert Blatchford. As I read the last part of Sapolsky’s book, the end of Chesterton’s essay came to mind:
“Yes, there is one freedom that has never been chained. … It is freedom of the mind, that is to say, it is the only freedom against which Mr. Blatchford makes war. What all the tyrants have left he would wipe out. What no gaoler could ever deny a prisoner he would deny. In all the wars and persecutions of the world, countless people have looked out of their little barred windows and said, ‘At least my thoughts are free.'” “No, no,” says the face of Mr. Blatchford, suddenly appearing at the window, “your thoughts are the inevitable result of heredity and environment. Your thoughts are as material as your dungeons. Your thoughts are as mechanical as the guillotine.’ Thus pants this strange comforter from cell to cell.”
Barr, “Feel Free”
You may also like to read: My answer to free will deniers: Show me. It’s helpful to think of the question this way – not “Do we have free will?” but “What does it mean to believe we don’t have free will?” (Michael Egnor)
