I intended to write a critique of Sapolsky’s method for the study of human behavior in his last two books but after reading a couple of chapters from both I did not think it worthwhile for the following reasons: his writings are filled with anecdotes, thought experiments whose explanatory connection remains dubious. he uses terms like “decision”, “intent” etc in peculiar ways to draw one unclear conclusion after the other. For example, “You view a picture of someone holding an object, for a fraction of a second; you must decide whether it was a cell phone or a handgun.” We don’t “decide” how we interpret our impressions in any meaningful sense of this word. If it is an intense situation, where the capacity to deliberate is subdued by other needs but that is not how we live day to day – there is a rush, tiredness, and biases; that might inform initial impressions. But as soon as the impressions are conscious, the faculty and capacity of deliberation can review the impression.
And he does not answer any of the classical objections against determinism. So, instead after a brief criticism of his political program, I will point out some classical positions on free will on which Sapolsky has written 700+ pages and those he failed to acknowledge and address.
What little I could gather about his political and social program is the following. Based on “Hierarchies, Obedience, and Resistance” in his previous book Behave and the first two chapters of Determined. Based on these two conclusions can be clearly seen in his writings:
- Human individuals have natural inequalities and they are reflected in the natural hierarchies of human societies. These hierarchies if led by people who are not concerned about the “common good” (“bad apples”) can be harmful and if people or groups are concerned with the “common good” (“good apples”) then they can be good. Sometimes people subordinated in the hierarchy can “resist” and new “heroes” can emerge, creating new and different hierarchies. He writes that “like other hierarchical species, we have alpha individuals, but unlike most others, we occasionally get to choose them. Moreover, they often are not merely highest ranking but also “lead,” attempting to maximize this thing called the common good.”
- People lack deliberation (and hence reasons) and have no real control over what they do and hence over the world, so it is not a problem if they live in hierarchies, they are in fact necessary for their survival. [The whole of the latest book]
Human dignity and freedom lie in our capacity to be undetermined, and free to act on rational grounds, and any restriction on our deliberative capacities is unjust. These enlightenment and libertarian ideas cannot be formulated in Sapolsky’s behaviorist worldview. In fact, this is what he is trying to resist. Sapolsky loses objectivity in a social inquiry by pretending to be neutral or fooling himself into believing that he actually is (perhaps because he was determined to do so) when he is defending a particular view of human nature and justification for command societies where intense “learning” programs will be required for possibly gaining correct morality, under the garbs of science. Because theologies and ideologies are old-fashioned nowadays, scientific jargon with no substance sells. Maybe I am being unfair and this is just his thesis presented in the culture of debate and deliberation. [He writes: “Thus, a lot of people have linked emergence and free will; I will not consider most of them because, to be frank, I can’t understand what they’re suggesting, and to be franker, I don’t think the lack of comprehension is entirely my fault.” emphasis added] But the point remains the same with or without his “intent”.
In Determined, he argues in favor of a strong determinism. Where we have no room for free will.
Experience of freedom of choice is perhaps more intensely felt than perceptual experience. You can stop reading this right now – you do have that choice, and you can act on it or not. We can try to study this capacity and the “faculty of choice” in Descartes’ phrase as a feature of the mind/brain, as a particular part of nature we are yet to learn about – and may or may not succeed. Or we can say this experience is an illusion and we do not have any choice. Sapolsky begins the book talking about William James, but I guess he did not consider his views on this issue for the same reasons he left out other thinkers. James noted that “the arguments I am about to urge all proceed on two suppositions: first, when we make theories about the world and discuss them with one another, we do so in order to attain a conception of things which shall give us subjective satisfaction; and, second, if there be two conceptions, and the one seems to us, on the whole, more rational than the other, we are entitled to suppose that the more rational one is the truer of the two.” James then notes if determinism were true then why is the proponent of determinism engaging in rational argument about the soundness of their claims. Is she compelled to do it and reader not free to judge the claim to be more or less truer? This picture and also the picture of not trusting our most immediate experience have no rational grounds be considered correct.