Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

by Robert M. Sapolsky

So, it seems that William James was giving a lecture about the nature of life and the universe. Afterward, an old woman came up and said, “Professor James, you have it all wrong.” To which James asked, “How so, madam?” “Things aren’t at all like you said,” she replied. “The world is on the back of a gigantic turtle.” “Hmm.” said James, bemused. “That may be so, but where does that turtle stand?” “On the back of another turtle,” she answered. “But madam,” said James indulgently, “where does that turtle stand?” To which the old woman responded triumphantly: “It’s no use, Professor James. It’s turtles all the way down!”[*]

The answer is that the behavior happened because something that preceded it caused it to happen. And why did that prior circumstance occur? Because something that preceded it caused it to happen. It’s antecedent causes all the way down, not a floating turtle or causeless cause to be found.

we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment.

Randomly pick any of the graduates. Do some magic so that this garbage collector started life with the graduate’s genes. Likewise for getting the womb in which nine months were spent and the lifelong epigenetic consequences of that. Get the graduate’s childhood as well—one filled with, say, piano lessons and family game nights, instead of, say, threats of going to bed hungry, becoming homeless, or being deported for lack of papers. Let’s go all the way so that, in addition to the garbage collector having gotten all that of the graduate’s past, the graduate would have gotten the garbage collector’s past. Trade every factor over which they had no control, and you will switch who would be in the graduation robe and who would be hauling garbage cans. This is what I mean by determinism.

Persuade some wildly invested volunteers to practice a five-finger exercise on the piano two hours a day for weeks, and their motor cortex remaps to devote more space to controlling finger movements in that hand; get this—the same thing happens if the volunteer spends that time imagining the finger exercise.[23]

In 1911, the poet Morris Rosenfeld wrote the song “Where I Rest,” at a time when it was the immigrant Italians, Irish, Poles, and Jews who were exploited in the worst jobs, worked to death or burned to death in sweatshops.[*] It always brings me to tears, provides one metaphor for the lives of the unlucky:[19] Where I Rest Look not for me in nature’s greenery You will not find me there, I fear. Where lives are wasted by machinery That is where I rest, my dear. Look not for me where birds are singing Enchanting songs find not my ear. For in my slavery, chains a-ringing Is the music I do hear. Not where the streams of life are flowing I draw not from these fountains clear. But where we reap what greed is sowing Hungry teeth and falling tears. But if your heart does love me truly Join it with mine and hold me near. Then will this world of toil and cruelty Die in birth of Eden here.[*]