Robert Sapolsky

Neuroendocrinologist and primatologist, and the corpus’s clearest instance of a biologist arguing about mind. Two of his books are paged here: the-trouble-with-testosterone (1997), the essay collection that established his register, and determined (2023), which argues that free will does not exist and that blame and punishment need rebuilding without it.

The through-line across twenty-six years is one claim — behaviour has biological causes worth taking seriously — hardening from an essayist’s theme into a thesis with policy consequences.

His position in this spoke is deliberately awkward and worth keeping that way. His method is biology, so the routing rule sends him here rather than to ../philosophy-wiki, but reviewers of determined argue precisely that he has answered a philosophical question with scientific tools: Jessica Riskin calls it scientism, Kieran Setiya faults him for ignoring the philosophical literature, and John Martin Fischer — who works on free will — found nothing new in it. The disagreement is recorded on free-will rather than resolved.

Related

determined · the-trouble-with-testosterone · free-will · free-will-belief-effects · synthesis