Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Some aspects of Robert Sapolsky’s arguments against free will in his book Determined are clarified. In the first place, it is argued that our choices are determined not in the sense that physical laws are always deterministic, but in the sense that, even if random events may happen, our choices cannot be but the ones they have been, given everything that did not depend upon us (including indeterministic events). In the second place, the determination of our choices is not equivalent to their not being conscious, deliberate choices, for the difference between these and other kinds of psychological or physiological events does not consists in an imaginary ontological openness, but just in following different (and more complex) neurological routes. Lastly, it is argued that the inevitability of our choices only precludes moral assessment according to some limited moral theories.
DOI: 10.30827/trif.34326
Author: Jesus Zamora Bonilla
Institution: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Language: English
Topic: Free Will and Agency
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Awards: G1366117797, G6390814298, G8920660035
OpenAlex ID: W4412778507