Undetermined - a response to Robert Sapolsky. Part 2 - assessing the scientific evidence
In Part 1 of this series, I explored the different philosophical premises that Robert Sapolsky and I bring to the question of free will, in our respective books, Determined and Free Agents . Here, I will examine the scientific evidence that Sapolsky marshals to make his argument that all our decisions are fully determined. Part 2 No, but yeah, but no – assessing the scientific evidence Sapolsky presents an array of experimental evidence from studies of various kinds to support his claim that we are completely driven by all the causal factors in our past or intervening on us in the present. The word study appears 163 times in the text, in fact, and it felt a bit like being pummeled into submission at times. I’m all for providing experimental evidence to support one’s claims, but in this case, much of the supposed evidence is completely unreliable. The fields that are cited the most include social psychology, especially social “priming” experi...