Robert Sapolsky 2018. Determined. Life without free will. London: The Bodley Head, 511 pp.

Despite being already in agreement with Robert Sapolsky that there is no such thing as free will, I found myself unable to mount the willpower to finish this. Too much Sapolsky, too little brevity and clarity. And way too much on long-winded expositions of his ongoing debates on the subject with Daniel Dennett.

There is a whole chapter on what seems a major hole in the determination argument: the butterfly effect (maybe unpredictability of outcomes from minor chemical/physiological peturbations makes it seems like we have free will?). Sapolsky says no, but does it with impenetrable verbosity.

This book has attracted a number of gushing reviews so maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. But see John Martin Fischer at the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Looking forward to these issues being taken up by someone who is not being paid by the page.