# Determined *Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will* is [[Robert Sapolsky]]'s 2023 book-length case against free will, published October 17, 2023 by Penguin Press (528 pp., ISBN 978-0525560975). Where *[[Behave]]* (2017) compiled the empirical evidence about how human behavior is produced and ended with a chapter previewing the free-will argument, *Determined* makes the philosophical case in full and works through the moral, legal, and political implications. ## The thesis The behavior of a human at any given moment is the necessary outcome of biological and environmental antecedents the person did not choose — genes, prenatal environment, childhood, current hormones, current culture. At no step in that causal regress does an *uncaused causer* (a "self" existing independently of antecedents) enter the equation. Therefore the everyday concept of free will is incoherent, and the moral architecture of *desert* (people deserve their punishments and rewards because they *could have chosen otherwise*) rests on a fiction. See [[Determinism]] for the full structural treatment of the argument. ## Structure The book proceeds in roughly three movements: **Part 1 — The empirical case.** Sapolsky walks back through the same reverse-chronology architecture as *Behave*: behavior at this moment is produced by neurons, hormones, recent stimuli, childhood, in-utero environment, genes, culture, evolution. The reader who has read *Behave* will find this familiar; for the new reader it is a compressed version of the longer book. **Part 2 — The philosophical engagement.** Sapolsky takes on the major philosophical positions defending free will, especially **compatibilism** (the view that free will and determinism are not in conflict, as defended by Daniel Dennett and others). His core reply to compatibilism: it saves the *word* "free will" by redefinition (acting on one's own reasons without coercion) at the cost of saving the *moral practice* the word was supposed to ground. If no one could have done otherwise given antecedents, *desert* is fiction regardless of what compatibilists call the residual. Sapolsky also engages **quantum indeterminacy** (random ≠ free), **chaos and emergence** (unpredictable ≠ uncaused), and the **Libet experiments** (which he treats as suggestive but not load-bearing). **Part 3 — Living without free will.** The most distinctive part of the book. Sapolsky argues that a society that took hard determinism seriously would have to fundamentally restructure criminal justice (away from retribution toward incapacitation, restitution, and forward-looking deterrence — his quarantine analogy is central), reframe achievement and failure (no one *earned* their successes any more than they *earned* their failures), and confront the fact that meritocracy, prosperity gospel, and personal-responsibility politics all import a metaphysics that does not survive scrutiny. He addresses the obvious worry — that the loss of free will leads to nihilism or moral collapse — by arguing that meaning, love, and ethical commitment can survive intact; only the metaphysical underwriting of *desert* needs to go. ## Why this matters in RWKB The book is the most accessible and rigorous available scientific case against the agentic moralism that powers a substantial portion of right-wing political philosophy. Specifically: - **Against retributive criminal justice** — the dominant right-coded justification for harsh sentencing assumes free choice. Sapolsky's argument cuts the moral legitimacy of retribution as such (without denying we may need to incapacitate dangerous people). - **Against the prosperity gospel and meritocracy** — the rich did not *earn* their position any more than the poor *earned* theirs; outcomes are antecedents-driven. - **Against "personal responsibility" framings of poverty and addiction** — treating these as moral failings rather than as predictable outputs of biological and structural causes does not survive the determinist analysis. - **Against the Peterson / IDW self-help moralism** — the "clean your room and improve your life" tradition rests on a strong agentic premise the book attacks. The book is unwelcome on both sides of the political spectrum — progressives also rely on agentic-merit assumptions in places — but it is uniquely threatening to right-wing moral architecture because the right-wing public morality is unusually dependent on free-will assumptions. ## Critical reception The book received serious reviews across the philosophical and scientific press, with substantial pushback from compatibilist philosophers. Key threads: - **Compatibilist reviewers** (in *Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews* and elsewhere) argued that Sapolsky's framing of compatibilism is uncharitable — that he treats compatibilists as covertly trying to smuggle in libertarian free will rather than as defending a genuinely different conception. Sapolsky's reply: his concern is whether the practical-moral conclusions follow, not whether the redefinition is internally coherent. - **Scientific reviewers** were generally more sympathetic, especially on the empirical case for antecedent-driven behavior, which is broadly accepted in neuroscience and behavioral biology. - **Public reception** has been strong; the book reached general-audience bestseller lists and was widely discussed in podcasts and long-form interviews (Lex Fridman, Andrew Huberman, Sam Harris, etc.). - **Religious and conservative reviewers** (predictably) argued that Sapolsky was attacking foundations of human dignity, moral responsibility, and ordered society. Sapolsky's framing of these reactions in the book itself: they are *predictable* downstream effects of the moral framework being threatened, not arguments against the underlying science. ## Companion / opposing texts - **Compatibilist defenses:** Daniel Dennett, *Freedom Evolves* (2003) and *Elbow Room* (1984); Susan Wolf, *Freedom Within Reason* (1990) - **Other hard-determinist cases:** Sam Harris, *Free Will* (2012; much shorter); Derk Pereboom, *Living Without Free Will* (2001); Galen Strawson's "basic argument" papers ## Author [[Robert Sapolsky]] — Stanford neuroendocrinologist and primatologist; MacArthur Fellow 1987. ## See also - [[Robert Sapolsky]] — author profile - [[Determinism]] — the canonical concept page on the position the book argues for - [[Behave]] — the empirical predecessor - [[Decision Science]] — subject hub (Determinism lives in [[Mental Models]]) - [[Psychology]] — subject hub