May 14, 2026 05:46 PM
(This post was last modified: May 14, 2026 06:36 PM by C C.)
Heh. Another classic depiction of free will that depends on randomness and requirement of a magical ability to be able do or avoid or be anything. Rather than you (your body) autonomously determining what it wants to act according to its own preferences, the latter actually open to changing over time. Insane people behave randomly or exhibit radical unpredictability -- who wants that?
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You’ve never had control over a single event in your life, says leading neuroscientist
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-b...-free-will
EXCERPTS: Did you really choose to read this article? Or was the decision just the product of neurons firing in your brain, caused by biochemical reactions, governed by the laws of physics?
Whether or not humans truly have agency over our decisions seems like a foolish question to ask. Experience tells us that we have the ability to choose to do – or not to do – just about anything presented to us at a given moment.
Even reading this article may seem like a bizarre action if we’re little more than meat puppets, wandering autonomously from one moment to the next. But Robert Sapolsky says otherwise – that your sense of a being free agent is little more than an illusion conjured up by biology and how it interacts with your environment.
And Sapolsky is a man worth hearing out. He’s a professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University and a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the ‘Genius Grant’. He is also the author of Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will, an instant New York Times bestseller upon publication in late 2023.
Sapolsky sat down for a conversation with BBC Science Focus about all things free will; why we don’t have it and, perhaps more importantly, how we can still extract meaning from a life without it.
[...] it comes down to the fact that all we are is biology, over which we have no control, interacting with the environment, over which we have no control. There’s nothing else there.
[...] When you look at how it works, that’s all it is. There’s no other place in there where you could posit that a neuron or a brain region or a person could do something completely independently of everything that came before.
[...] F: What about quantum physics? Does that not introduce some independent randomness that could constitute free will?
RS: Okay, this is where I often scream in agony. Quantum indeterminacy, to the extent at which I understand it as a simple-minded neuroscientist, says that at the itty bitty subatomic level stuff happens without prior cause. From there, people have been running with the idea that you can build free will. But the quantum argument falls apart for three reasons.... (MORE - missing details)
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You’ve never had control over a single event in your life, says leading neuroscientist
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-b...-free-will
EXCERPTS: Did you really choose to read this article? Or was the decision just the product of neurons firing in your brain, caused by biochemical reactions, governed by the laws of physics?
Whether or not humans truly have agency over our decisions seems like a foolish question to ask. Experience tells us that we have the ability to choose to do – or not to do – just about anything presented to us at a given moment.
Even reading this article may seem like a bizarre action if we’re little more than meat puppets, wandering autonomously from one moment to the next. But Robert Sapolsky says otherwise – that your sense of a being free agent is little more than an illusion conjured up by biology and how it interacts with your environment.
And Sapolsky is a man worth hearing out. He’s a professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University and a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the ‘Genius Grant’. He is also the author of Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will, an instant New York Times bestseller upon publication in late 2023.
Sapolsky sat down for a conversation with BBC Science Focus about all things free will; why we don’t have it and, perhaps more importantly, how we can still extract meaning from a life without it.
[...] it comes down to the fact that all we are is biology, over which we have no control, interacting with the environment, over which we have no control. There’s nothing else there.
[...] When you look at how it works, that’s all it is. There’s no other place in there where you could posit that a neuron or a brain region or a person could do something completely independently of everything that came before.
[...] F: What about quantum physics? Does that not introduce some independent randomness that could constitute free will?
RS: Okay, this is where I often scream in agony. Quantum indeterminacy, to the extent at which I understand it as a simple-minded neuroscientist, says that at the itty bitty subatomic level stuff happens without prior cause. From there, people have been running with the idea that you can build free will. But the quantum argument falls apart for three reasons.... (MORE - missing details)