{"id":3551,"date":"2013-01-22T08:24:59","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T13:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=3551"},"modified":"2013-01-22T08:25:23","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T13:25:23","slug":"the-worry-that-we-dont-have-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2013\/01\/22\/human-nature\/the-worry-that-we-dont-have-free-will\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Worry” that we don’t have Free Will"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last couple of posts I’ve been looking at some of the more interesting responses to the “annual question” at Edge.org.\u00a0 This year’s question was, “What *Should” we be Worried About,” and answers were submitted by a select group of 155 public intellectuals, scientists, philosophers, etc.\u00a0 An answer that is interesting if only because it is counterintuitive was submitted by Robert Sapolsky<\/a>, a professor of biological science and neurology at Stanford.\u00a0 In his response, entitled, “The Danger Of Inadvertently Praising Zygomatic Arches<\/a>,” we find that Sapolsky is worried that we will make wrong choices because we don’t have free will.\u00a0 In his words,<\/p>\n

I don’t think that there is Free will. The conclusion first hit me in some sort of primordial ooze of insight when I was about 13-years old, and that conclusion has only become stronger since then. What worries me is that despite the fact that I think this without hesitation, there are times that it is simply too hard to feel<\/em> as if there is no free will, to believe that, to act accordingly. What really worries me is that it is so hard for virtually anyone to truly act as if there is no free will. And that this can have some pretty bad consequences.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and,<\/p>\n

But it is so difficult to really believe that there is no free will, when so many of the threads of causality are not yet known, or are as intellectually inaccessible as having to automatically think about the behavioral consequences of everything from the selective pressures of hominid evolution to what someone had for breakfast. This difficulty is something that we should all worry about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To this, I can only answer, “Why?”\u00a0 Why be worried about things you can do absolutely nothing about?\u00a0 Why be worried that people won’t “truly act as if there is no free will” when it is perfectly obvious that, lacking free will, they can have no choice in the matter?\u00a0 Why be worried about how difficult it is to “really believe that there is no free will” if we have not the faintest control over what we believe?\u00a0 This is supposed to be a difficulty we all “should” worry about?\u00a0 Surely it must be obvious that “should” is a completely meaningless term in a world without free will.\u00a0 “Should” implies the freedom to choose between alternatives.\u00a0 Remove free will, and that freedom is removed with it.\u00a0 Remove free will and worry becomes absurd.\u00a0 Why worry about something you can do nothing about?\u00a0 It makes no more sense than\u00a0poisoning your whole life by constantly worrying about the inevitability of death.<\/p>\n

I by no means mean to imply that I am taking sides one way or the other on the question of whether we have free will.\u00a0 I am simply pointing out that the very suggestion that we worry about it implies that we do.\u00a0 If we have no free will then the question of whether we will worry about it\u00a0or not is completely out of our control.\u00a0 In that case it turns out I am in that happy category of people who are not worried about it.\u00a0 If we do have free will, then the rationale for worrying about the lack of it is removed.\u00a0 In either case, I am happy to report, I have no worries.<\/p>\n

Neither do I imply any disrespect of Prof. Sapolsky, a brilliant man whose work I admire regardless of whether I have any choice in the matter or not.\u00a0 See, for example, his work on the Toxo parasite<\/a>, which strongly suggests that we must throw manipulation by other species into the mix along with genes and culture if we are ever to gain a complete understanding of human behavior.\u00a0 Work of this kind, by the way, is so critical to the human condition that it cries out for replication.\u00a0 There are only a few groups in the world doing similar work, and one must hope that they are not so intent on charging ahead with their own research that they neglect the scientific imperative of checking the work of their peers.<\/p>\n

On the lighter side, readers of Prof. Sapolsky’s response will note that he throws in the disclaimer, “…\u00a0lack of free will doesn’t remotely equal anything about genetic determinism.”\u00a0 The Blank Slaters must have gotten to him!\u00a0 In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there is not nor has there ever been such a beast as a “genetic determinist.”\u00a0 They are as rare as unicorns.\u00a0 The term was invented by cultural determinists to use in ad hominem<\/em> attacks on anyone who dared to suggest that our behavior might actually be influenced by something other than environment and learning.\u00a0 Their ideology requires them to blindly insist that “there is no evidence whatsoever” that anything but culture influences our behavior, just as the fundamentalist Christian must blindly insist that “there is not one iota of evidence for Darwinian evolution,” and the right wing ideologue must blindly insist that “there is not the faintest scrap of evidence for global warming.”\u00a0 Of course, Prof. Sapolsky has just supplied even more compelling evidence that they are wrong.<\/p>\n

In closing, I will include a poetic statement of Prof. Sapolsky’s philosophy by Edward Fitzgerald, who cloaked his own world view in his whimsical “translation” of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat:<\/p>\n

With earth’s first clay they did the last man knead,<\/p>\n

And there of the last harvest sow’s the seed,<\/p>\n

And the first morning of creation wrote,<\/p>\n

what the last dawn of reckoning shall read.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last couple of posts I’ve been looking at some of the more interesting responses to the “annual question” at Edge.org.\u00a0 This year’s question was, “What *Should” we be Worried About,” and answers were submitted by a select group of 155 public intellectuals, scientists, philosophers, etc.\u00a0 An answer that is interesting if only because … Continue reading “The “Worry” that we don’t have Free Will”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,105,178,166,28,29,66],"tags":[322],"class_list":["post-3551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-evolutionary-psychology-2","category-free-will","category-human-evolution","category-human-nature","category-philosophy","category-psychology","tag-free-will"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-Vh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3551"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3554,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions\/3554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}