The “nothing more than” claim is not just that we lack free will (and thus moral responsibility), but we are not even agents (in the sense of being active) at all. We do not make genuine decisions and engage in robust practical reasoning. Rather, things just happen to us. Indeed, we are nothing more than a bunch of cells (neurons), determined to bounce around as they do. Importantly, we do not actively change our moral behavior. It does indeed change, but not as a result of active choices on our part (265-299). As Sapolsky puts it, we are not the captains of our ships. (It seems that, on his view, we are not even cabin boys!) (View Highlight)
Above I pointed out that Sapolsky defines free will as requiring causal indeterminism. He is not alone among neuroscientists in defining free will in this way, but this leads to serious confusions. Much unproductive debate has taken place between neuroscientists and philosophers due to this (often implicit) definition or assumption. The neuroscientists in question believe that establishing that the brain works deterministically implies (without further argumentation) that there is no free will. The philosophers deem this unacceptable, because it rules out compatibilism by definition (View Highlight)
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Defining free will in this way evidently begs the question against compatibilism about free will and causal determinism. If this is the correct definition of free will, why bother arguing for incompatibilism at all? It is already there on a beautiful metaphysical silver platter! There are reasonable and plausible arguments for the incompatibility of free will (interpreted in certain specific ways) with determinism, but these arguments are not decided by definitions of the two key notions alone. The history of discussions of free will, including the contemporary debates, is filled with various critiques and defenses of compatibilism. To evaluate these arguments, we need to be clear about what notion of free will is under consideration, and we should consider the arguments carefully. It would be egregiously unhelpful and unfair simply to define compatibilism out of existence from the beginning of the inquiry. Yet this is precisely what Sapolsky does. (View Highlight)
I can identify no arguments in the book to the effect that any of the prima facie plausible compatibilist accounts of the free will required for responsibility is inadequate; nor do I find an argument that all such accounts must be rejected. (View Highlight)
1996). There are many other indeterministic strategies for analyzing free will that don’t rest on quantum mechanics or total randomness at any level—event-causal, agent-causal, and non-causal. The proponents of these accounts contend that indeterminism need not imply randomness or lack of control. Sapolsky does not engage with any of them. There are, then, no serious reflections on free will, compatibilist or libertarian, in this book (View Highlight)