{"id":13622,"date":"2024-03-30T08:49:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-30T08:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=13622"},"modified":"2024-03-30T13:45:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-30T13:45:38","slug":"books-science-philosophy-sapolsky-determinism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=13622","title":{"rendered":"BOOKS\/SCiENCE\/PHiLOSOPHY: Sapolsky & Determinism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was looking at some of the Guardian\u2019s \u2018Book of the Month\u2019 articles yesterday, and stumbled on a number of titles I\u2019d like to read, such as these:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These look right up my street, subject wise.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the Wikipedia page about him<\/a>, he\u2019s quoted thus: \u2018there is no free will, or at least that there is much less<\/em> free will than generally assumed when it really matters.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve yet to read his book. I think I will<\/em> read it. But in the meantime, I\u2019d like to put down my reaction to just a few of the basic ideas that strike me, as a reaction to purely learning of the books existence and central theses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The author with his work.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But first\u2026 I like a number of things about Sapolsky, including this statement: \u2018\u2026 around age thirteen or so. In my adolescent years one of the defining actions in my life was breaking away from all religious belief whatsoever.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That chimes so well with my own experience. Brought up in a very Christian (of sorts) household, I\u2019d say that between 11-13 years of age, possibly earlier, I started to transition from occasionally wondering if all this religious stuff was just nonsense – as soon as I could think I had started to suspect as much – to seriously questioning it for myself, and finally abandoning it altogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having read a couple of reviews of Determined, my immediate reaction is that the old bugbear of semantics, or definitions, might (as it so often is) be a crucial matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On one immediate and, I would think, blindingly obvious (to the point of redundancy), level\u2026 of course everything is determined what immediately precedes it. But there\u2019s a grey area between the possibilities every moment creates, and actually realised eventualities, as brought about by human agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can well imagine, from both intuitive perspectives, and also my limited reading in the area of cognitive science, that our consciousness is both much more limited and yet way more powerful than popularly understood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m anticipating that Sapolsky and the specialist research he might cite will look at what\u2019s going on in the brain when we believe we\u2019re making conscious decisions. And that\u2019s an area whereof I do not know, and therefore shall not speak!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having said that. On the everyday lived level of human experience, I would argue that there has <\/em>to be free will. It\u2019s perhaps a bit like the way physics might tell us, if we burrow sufficiently deeply, that solids are not in fact solid, after all. On some very deeply investigated level, that may be the truth. But if you drive into a brick wall\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it becomes, possibly – I really<\/em> ought to read the book! – a question (or whole field of questions\/inquiry) of what we mean by or understand as \u2018free will\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could waffle endlessly about what I mean, in common everyday terms, about my idea of what free will is. I might choose to look at recent issues in my life, like the choice of whether or not to drink alcohol. And, as far as the term free will has any<\/em> ordinary meaning to me, I\u2019d say I\u2019m exercising some in this respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are the factors that lead me to stop determining<\/em>, or merely influencing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another angle I might come at it from would be that ol\u2019 chestnut about the wide range of differing responses to the same events that different folk evince. Now of course you can unpick it all – and I suspect that\u2019s exactly what Sapolsky does – and say trauma survivor A handles it better because\u2026 whereas B succumbs because their history\u2026 etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it can also surely be argued that one can learn and cultivate an ability to choose how to react to things differently. You find your natural reaction to X is causing difficulties, so you adapt. Potentially choosing to change how you react (or adopting some other strategy).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well\u2026 I find I\u2019m compellingly intrigued by all this, and that rather than speculate too much about it all, I\u2019ll try and get around to reading Sapolsky\u2019s book, and see what exactly he\u2019s saying. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was looking at some of the Guardian\u2019s \u2018Book of the Month\u2019 articles yesterday, and stumbled on a number of titles I\u2019d like to read, such as these: On the Wikipedia page about him, he\u2019s quoted thus: \u2018there is no free will, or at least that there is much less free will than generally assumed when it … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “BOOKS\/SCiENCE\/PHiLOSOPHY: Sapolsky & Determinism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-3xI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13622"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13622"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13627,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13622\/revisions\/13627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}