Yay very cool! I have a BA in philosophy but it's almost 30 years old lol. So it kinda doesn't count. My phil of mind graduate studies at Tufts with Dan Dennett ended in 2003, and I walked away from philosophy entirely after that experience, it was not the right program for me, as much as I loved aspects of it.
I think it's interesting that Sapolsky himself admits that although he considers himself a full determinist, he doesn't actually manage to live his life as such. In a way, is that admitting that you really aren't a determinist, but just kinda wish you could be? lol. Anyway, I really really really love his breakdown of criminality in a youtube talk he gave here: https://youtu.be/rv38taDUpwQ?si=MvFoX4YgD-a79TIk&t=2304 If you have any interest figuring out where we go from here if free will actually does not exist.
One thing I love at the end of the above youtube talk also is that he points out that if we are privileged enough to be listening to a talk about free will and determinism and have enough leisure in our lives to sit around thinking about these concepts, then we are by default the lucky ones and it feels like a huge letdown to consider the fact that we don't actually deserve any of the privilege we've had our whole lives. but that for "average" or "below average" people, this would be a massive relief. That's a bit of a wake-up call. for me, this is especially viscerally important because so many of my worst experiences with people have come from concepts of magical thinking, that if something good happens to you and something bad happens to someone else, they deserve it and so do you. Yanno, like a bullet missing you and killing someone else and claiming that god must have intervened on your behalf - soooo, god hates that other guy, and his family and loved ones deserved that, then? It's super gross to me, at best. And inherently dangerous at worst.
I am digging through the thickest part of Sapolsky's "Determined" book right now where he's explaining why chaoticism and other forms of mathematical/scientific unpredictability such as quantum theory don't make room for free will, but I'm most excited for the "where do we go from here" 2nd half of the book. Since I've studied with Dan, I already grock the concept that if we make a space for randomness, a random flitting atom moving one way or another doesn't give us any more free will than a determined motion of that atom would. If it's determined, we didn't choose it - if it's random, we still didn't choose it.
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I think it's interesting that Sapolsky himself admits that although he considers himself a full determinist, he doesn't actually manage to live his life as such. In a way, is that admitting that you really aren't a determinist, but just kinda wish you could be? lol. Anyway, I really really really love his breakdown of criminality in a youtube talk he gave here: https://youtu.be/rv38taDUpwQ?si=MvFoX4YgD-a79TIk&t=2304 If you have any interest figuring out where we go from here if free will actually does not exist.
One thing I love at the end of the above youtube talk also is that he points out that if we are privileged enough to be listening to a talk about free will and determinism and have enough leisure in our lives to sit around thinking about these concepts, then we are by default the lucky ones and it feels like a huge letdown to consider the fact that we don't actually deserve any of the privilege we've had our whole lives. but that for "average" or "below average" people, this would be a massive relief. That's a bit of a wake-up call. for me, this is especially viscerally important because so many of my worst experiences with people have come from concepts of magical thinking, that if something good happens to you and something bad happens to someone else, they deserve it and so do you. Yanno, like a bullet missing you and killing someone else and claiming that god must have intervened on your behalf - soooo, god hates that other guy, and his family and loved ones deserved that, then? It's super gross to me, at best. And inherently dangerous at worst.
I am digging through the thickest part of Sapolsky's "Determined" book right now where he's explaining why chaoticism and other forms of mathematical/scientific unpredictability such as quantum theory don't make room for free will, but I'm most excited for the "where do we go from here" 2nd half of the book. Since I've studied with Dan, I already grock the concept that if we make a space for randomness, a random flitting atom moving one way or another doesn't give us any more free will than a determined motion of that atom would. If it's determined, we didn't choose it - if it's random, we still didn't choose it.