You may think you chose to read this, but Stanford scientist Robert Sapolsky would disagree. He says virtually all human behavior is beyond our conscious control.
that there are different outcomes at an individual level supports free will.
Well I think their argument is that this doesn’t follow. To have variation between individuals all you need are different influences over the time leading up to the measured outcome. That basically everyone is assured essentially unique genetics and a unique existence from conception (no two people occupy the same body, apart from twins briefly) guarantees that everyone has unique influences.
So the question then is what is the relationship between influences and behaviours and can we measure whether variations in the former are sufficient to explain variations in the latter.
All of which excludes the argument that many people basically lead to similar outcomes under similar influences.
This is where I suspect the scientist’s thoughts/theories will fall down. In the end, it seems to me we need a complete or at least pretty good theory of consciousness to truly get to bottom of this. We don’t. Arguably we’re pretty clueless on how any sophisticated cognition works all the way up from biochemistry to behaviour. So I’m not sure how certain anyone can be either way.
Well I think their argument is that this doesn’t follow. To have variation between individuals all you need are different influences over the time leading up to the measured outcome. That basically everyone is assured essentially unique genetics and a unique existence from conception (no two people occupy the same body, apart from twins briefly) guarantees that everyone has unique influences.
So the question then is what is the relationship between influences and behaviours and can we measure whether variations in the former are sufficient to explain variations in the latter.
All of which excludes the argument that many people basically lead to similar outcomes under similar influences.
This is where I suspect the scientist’s thoughts/theories will fall down. In the end, it seems to me we need a complete or at least pretty good theory of consciousness to truly get to bottom of this. We don’t. Arguably we’re pretty clueless on how any sophisticated cognition works all the way up from biochemistry to behaviour. So I’m not sure how certain anyone can be either way.