This version of compatibilism has produced numerous papers by philosophers and legal scholars concerning the relevance of neuroscience to free will. After reading lots of them, I’ve concluded that they usually boil down to three sentences:

a. Wow, there’ve been all these cool advances in neuroscience, all reinforcing the conclusion that ours is a deterministic world.

b. Some of those neuroscience findings challenge our notions of agency, moral responsibility, and deservedness so deeply that one must conclude that there is no free will.

c. Nah, it still exists.

I mean, that’s the first chapter. Seriously, are any of the folks with such strong opinions actually going to read the book?

It’s weird how vociferous the arguments about the topic are from people who haven’t read the book yet are.

What’s the point of commenting about a book you aren’t even willing to read?

Sapolsky is largely on the money for most of the book, and probably undersells just how profound the pure stimuli->response nature of behavior is.

If your philosophy stops with Descartes, the book is probably going to pose interesting arguments rather than compelling ones. Anything more modern and I think his examples do a good job of making it seem obvious.

If you have the opportunity to read any of his other books, you can see his growth toward this standpoint by evidence and deduction. Taken with Determined, it’s interesting to see someone who is sensitive enough to their own errors that they allow it to modify their viewpoint in consistent yet dramatic ways. The path through his last few books have felt more like a long running internal argument from someone invested enough in the topic they dedicate themselves to it.

Which is character development, cool.