Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Cover
Also by Robert M. Sapolsky
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
1. Turtles All the Way Down
	Styles of Views: Whom I Will Be Disagreeing With
	Ground Rules and Definitions
	And Why Does This Matter?
2. The Final Three Minutes of a Movie
	Three Hundred Milliseconds
	You Guys Proclaim the Death of Free Will, Based on Spontaneous Finger Movements?
	60 Percent? Really?
	What Is Consciousness?
	Free Won’t: The Power to Veto
	Just in Case You Thought This Was All Academic
	The Death of Free Will in the Shadow of Intent
3. Where Does Intent Come From?
	Seconds to Minutes Before
	Minutes to Days Before
	Weeks to Years Before
	Back to Adolescence
	And Childhood
	Back to the Womb
	Back to Your Very Beginning: Genes
	Back Centuries: The Sort of People You Come From
	Oh, Why Not? Evolution
	Seamless
4. Willing Willpower: The Myth of Grit
	Was-ness
	What You Were Given and What You Do with It
	Doing the Right Thing When It’s the Harder Thing to Do
	The Cognitive PFC
	The Social PFC
	Cognition versus Emotion, Cognition and Emotion, or Cognition via Emotion?
	The Same Exact Stuff
	The Legacy of the Preceding Seconds to an Hour
	The Legacy of the Preceding Hours to Days
	The Legacy of the Preceding Days to Years
	The Legacy of the Time of Pimples
	Further Back
	The Legacy of the Genes You Were Handed, and Their Evolution
	The Cultural Legacy Bequeathed to Your PFC by Your Ancestors
	The Death of the Myth of Freely Chosen Grit
5. A Primer on Chaos
	Back When Things Made Sense
	Chaotic Unpredictability
	Chaoticism You Can Do at Home
6. Is Your Free Will Chaotic?
	The Age of Chaos
	Wrong Conclusion #1: The Freely Choosing Cloud
	Wrong Conclusion #2: A Causeless Fire
	Conclusion
7. A Primer on Emergent Complexity
	Why We’re Not Talking about Michael Jackson Moonwalking
	Informative Scouts Followed by Random Encounters
	Fitting Infinitely Large Things into Infinitely Small Spaces
	Let’s Design a Town
	Talk Locally, but Don’t Forget to Also Talk Globally Now and Then
	Emergence Deluxe
8. Does Your Free Will Just Emerge?
	First, What All of Us Can Agree On
	Problem #1: Chaotic Missteps Redux
	Problem #2: Orphans Running Wild
	Problem #3: Defying Gravity
	At Last, Some Conclusions
9. A Primer on Quantum Indeterminacy
	Undetermined Randomness
	Low-Rent Randomness: Brownian Motion
	Quantum Indeterminacy
	Wave/Particle Duality
	Entanglement and nonlocality
	Quantum Tunneling
10. Is Your Free Will Random?
	Quantum Orgasmic-ness: Attention and Intention Are the Mechanics of Manifestation
	Problem #1: Bubbling Up
	Neuronal Spontaneity
	Problem #2: Is Your Free Will a Smear?
	Problem #3: Harnessing the Randomness of Quantum Indeterminacy to Direct the Consistencies of Who We Are
	Some Conclusions
	And Some Conclusions about the Last Six Chapters
10.5. Interlude
11. Will We Run Amok?
	Hard Determinists Careening through the Streets
	An Ideal Model System
	Atheists Gone Wild
	Saying versus Doing
	Old, Rich, Socialized Women versus Young, Poor, Solitary Guys
	When You’re Primed to Be Good for Goodness’ Sake
	One Atheist at a Time versus an Infestation of Them
	Who Needs the Help?
	Into the Valley of the Indifferent
12. The Ancient Gears within Us: How Does Change Happen?
	Protecting Your Gill
	The Learned Aplysia
	Detecting a Coincidence
	When They Become Thems
	Speeding Up and Slowing Down
13. We Really Have Done This Before
	The Falling Sickness
	Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is
	Generators and Refrigerators
	So What Is Actually Wrong?
	A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words—on Television
	Snapshots MIDMETAMORPHOSIS
	Conclusion
14. The Joy of Punishment
	Justice Served I
	Those Bleeding-Heart Liberals
	Justice Served II
	Reconciliation and Restorative Justice as Band-Aids
	Justice Served III
	Punishing Cheaters
	Justice Served IV
	Delicious, Whether Served Hot or Cold
	Justice Served V
15. If You Die Poor
	What You’d Give Up Along with Free Will
	A Liberatory Science (without Tongue in Cheek)
	Over and Over and Over
Acknowledgments
Appendix
	Neuroscience 101
	One Neuron at a Time
	Two Neurons at a Time: Synaptic Communication
	More Than Two Neurons at a Time
	One More Round of Scaling Up
Notes
Illustration Credits
Index
About the Author