|
|
|
Sapolsky is popping up on my youTube feed a lot recently, for some reason (maybe the new book). And just a couple of days ago, I turned on a podcast (Leading) to find that he was the special guest. That interview is about an hour long and is eminently listenable. He's an engaging conversationalist: humorous, erudite and insightful. And fascinating when he's talking within his own wheelhouse of baboon culture and why it is such a good analog for human culture.
On the other hand, a few years ago I read a book called Sex at Dawn, which argued that humans are just as closely related to bonobos as they are to chimps, and the former live in peaceful, matriarchal sex-filled societies. So if chimps come across a new troupe, they will kill them or run away, while the bonobos are much more sensible, and instead have a sex orgy. I don't know which of these two are a better analog for humans, chimps or bonobos, but the bonobo thesis at least explains why men have such big penises. (In fact, as I recall, in the book there is a whole chapter on relative penis size and ejaculate volume among primates.)
What Sopolsky had to say about politics and free will is more controversial, so I won't go there. Except to say that Sam Harris is also in the No Free Will camp. On the other hand, Sam's fellow horseman Dan Dennett and most philosophy professors are on the other side of that issue.
Here is a relatively accessible article arguing that we do in fact have free will, by any sensible definition of the term, by atheist philosopher and historian Richard Carrier, for anyone who is interested. There is also on Carrier's site, a summary of the feud between Harris and Dennett on this topic (and why Harris is wrong).
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/17340
Carrier's punchy, polemical style isn't for everyone.
Nevertheless, I would recommend his book, Sense & Goodness Without God, to any ex who feels a spiritual or philosophical vacuum after abandoning the Ji, or indeed for anyone who wants to see what a pretty fully worked out materialistic world view looks like.
rgj
|
Determined versus free will -- aunt bea
