Would it be better to accept that free will does not exist?

Issue Specifieda new book by renowned Stanford University professor of primate behavior and neurobiology Robert M. Sapolsky places him at the center of an ancient debate over whether humans have free will and influence over their actions. Specified is not just a biophilosophical treatise: it describes the potential benefits that a society that accepts Sapolsky’s thesis of zero free will and zero influence over our actions will have by becoming more humane and better able to understand and cope with the challenges facing humanity.

Sapolsky has made a name for himself teaching the science of stress and anxiety from a neurological perspective and its presence in the larger primate world. His popular teachings have enlightened millions and opened new avenues to help people consider the biological causes of their behaviors.

This year, Sapolsky went on a promotional tour in defense of Determinedthesis, including appearances on dozens of nationally known podcasts, and most recently, he launched an informative and humorous YouTube Q&A with his talented daughter, Rachel Share-Sapolsky.

We reached out to Sapolsky to talk about his thoughts on how public acceptance of science can change perspectives, as well as his experiences as an activist trying to get the world to think differently about why people behave the way they do.

Jan Rich-Frel and Marjorie Hecht: You point to the early 19th century in France as a turning point in society’s perception of epilepsy, from guilt for behavior during seizures to understanding it as a medical condition. Where do you see similar green shoots today?

Robert Sapolsky: A great example is the recognition that obesity is a biological disorder, not some kind of failure of Calvinist self-discipline. It is a biological disorder that is deeply sensitive to psychological state and social context, but it is biological nonetheless.

To give the most dramatic example, if someone has a mutation in the leptin receptor gene, their brain simply won’t process satiety signals, no matter how much willpower they have. Weight stigma is one of the most persistent biases in society today, and discoveries like this are only just beginning to change attitudes toward obesity.

Q: What was it about your research that prompted you to volunteer as a witness in death penalty trials, and what conclusions did you draw from your experiences about the potential for exerting social influence through your research?

Sapolsky: If you conclude that we have no free will, that we are simply the result of the interaction of biological luck over which we had no control, with environmental luck over which we had no control, the whole premise of criminal “justice” makes no intellectual or ethical sense. But I’m not going to be very useful if I show up in a courtroom to tell a jury that “hey, we’re all just biological machines.”

So my goals are much narrower with the public defenders that I work with. You take a defendant who’s done something terribly harmful, and you have the option of thinking about his behavior as an indicator of his questionable moral worth or as a measure of the damage that his own nervous system has suffered over the course of his life. So my job is to try to get the jury to think about the latter rather than the former, to teach them the science that leads to that conclusion.

In terms of the impact I had, it was almost completely futile; we “lost” 11 of the 13 cases I worked. The jurors sit there and nod their heads in the affirmative while you tell them how the frontal cortex works… and then when they go into the jury room and look at the cadaver photos, they come back with the maximum sentence.

Q: What human tendencies and abilities do you think will cause people to make positive use of your conclusion about the lack of free will?

Sapolsky: Above all, I would like to find ways for people to counteract their tendencies. By that I mean trying to resist the temptation of exceptionalism, which makes us decide that our needs are special and unusually worthy of consideration.

Q: Can you discuss how an individual can know right from wrong but be “organically incapable” of regulating their behavior appropriately? What happens in the prefrontal cortex to cause this?

Sapolsky: The prefrontal cortex (PFC) can inhibit and restrain emotional impulses: If you’re in a situation where you feel like doing something unethical, but you manage to resist, it’s because of the PFC. So any circumstance that damages, weakens the PFC, makes this kind of self-regulation more difficult.

That’s how you end up with someone who knows right from wrong, can write erudite philosophical essays about the differences… but in a moment of emotional arousal, can’t stop himself from doing something wrong.

Q: How do you think therapy helps someone with depression or other problems? What changes in the brain are possible? How does free will enter into the therapy process?

Sapolsky: Focusing just on depression, its cognitive core is the tendency to distort reality in a negative direction. On an emotional level, it is the perception of oneself as helpless in circumstances that are not true; on a neurochemical level, it is probably a deficiency of serotonin and a number of other neurotransmitters that cause an inability to anticipate pleasure and block negative rumination.

These are different levels of explaining the same thing. In the path of psychotherapy, the most effective approach is usually cognitive behavioral therapy, which is basically recognizing the reality of some trauma, failure, or rejection in the past, but also recognizing that it is a distortion to assume that you are destined for the same thing in the future, that you are helpless and hopeless in trying to prevent any recurrence.

Medications are designed to facilitate this process. Medications that increase serotonin, for example, reduce the stickiness, the unstoppable nature of negative rumination… which gives you the affective breathing space to begin to dismantle the distortions that are causing the ongoing negative affect.

Free will plays no role in any of this. Did you turn out to be a person who produces X amount of serotonin instead of Z, whose negative rumination pathways in the brain are tightly or loosely connected, whose learning structure is good or bad at building efficacy? Did you turn out to be a person who respects introspection, can do it with insight, can draw on those insights as a buffer against negative emotions? Did you turn out to be a person who could accept that they were struggling with depression in the first place? And we had no control over any of these things.

Q: Why is what we call “early readiness potential” detected in the brain not a form of free will as much as any subsequent action that realizes that potential?

Sapolsky: Because focusing on early readiness potential, ERP, misses the point. When exactly that happened in terms of the moment you form the intention to do something is ultimately irrelevant to the issue of free will. Instead, the lack of free will is shown by looking at the more global question of, “How did you become the kind of person who would form that intention at that moment?”

P: In your book Specifiedyou present an example of identical twins, only one of whom is schizophrenic, and the brain scan is completely different. Is schizophrenia then NO inherited? Could this be the result of an infection?

Sapolsky: Genes are about inheriting tendencies, predispositions, and vulnerabilities in behavior, not about inheriting inevitability. Consider a person with schizophrenia, and pick another person at random, and there is about a 2 percent chance that they will also have the disorder. If you pick that person’s twin instead, there is about a 50 percent chance that they will have the same trait. This is a powerful demonstration of genetic influence.

But the fact that an identical twin will have a 50 percent chance of NOdeveloping schizophrenia is evidence that genes are only part of the set of causes, not the determining factor.

What are some nongenetic factors that contribute to the risk of schizophrenia? Yes, some types of infections; perinatal complications; prenatal malnutrition; chronic stress; and heavy marijuana abuse during adolescence.

Q: In your lecture on religiosity, you cite twin/adoption studies from the late 1960s and 1970s that looked at schizophrenia and showed that some other family members were what were called schizotypal. These individuals were not full-blown schizophrenics, but they did exhibit “atypical” behaviors that are typical of schizophrenics. How do you respond to criticisms of twin/adoption studies, including criticisms of the schizophrenia spectrum? (such as the work of Jay Joseph)

Sapolsky: Twin studies, like adoption studies, form the basis of classical behavioral genetics approaches and have been the subject of harsh, though entirely justified, criticism.

If twin researchers tell you that genes explain X percent of the variability in a certain trait, the application of criticism usually shows that this percentage is actually lower than X – not because genes have Thread this has to do with this trait. However, this does not affect the main observation, which is that close relatives of people with schizophrenia are much more likely to show schizotypal traits than the general population.

This proves that schizophrenia and schizotypality have a common genetic basis – and this is the essence of Joseph’s statement, who claims that disorders with elements of schizophrenia form a continuum, a spectrum (although this does not at all confirm his broadest conclusions).

Q: You mentioned that you come from an Orthodox Jewish family. Have you had any reaction to your analysis of the roots of religiosity from the Orthodox community? Or from other religious thinkers?

Sapolsky: I’ve had some very negative reactions from people in both domains. But those reactions are based entirely on a complete omission of what I’m saying on the subject. I’m not saying anything as absurd as, “Oh, you have to be psychiatrically suspect to be religious,” or even, “Most/many/some people who are religious are psychiatrically suspect.”

I argue that it is fascinating that traits that may be mentally debilitating in a secular setting can be accepted, protected, and even seen as positive in a religious context.

This article was written by Human Bridges.