November 5, 2023
In the 15th century, a person with epilepsy would have a high chance of being burned at stake for being a witch.
At that time, seizures were viewed as a sign of the devil, and as such, epileptics (people with epilepsy) were very commonly accused of witchcraft and murdered for it.
Particularly if they also happened to be female.
At present, very few people would ascribe an epileptic seizure to moral or religious impropriety.
We view epilepsy as a neurological condition and therefore well outside the individual’s freely enacted volition.
Punishing someone for having a seizure or calling them weak willed or evil or worse just would not make sense.
Of course, we don’t let individuals with untreated epilepsy drive (at least not until six months from their last seizure).
But that’s not a punishment.
That’s just common sense.
Right?
Someone with an untreated seizure condition is at a high likelihood of loosing control of their vehicle.
We need to keep the roads safe.
By this logic (most people would agree) preventing one (unlucky) individual (with epilepsy) from driving in order to safeguard the public is overwhelmingly reasonable.
In this regard, the criminal justice system serves as the mechanism of constraint whereby the public welfare is protected via regulation of certain individual freedoms.
Not as a means of moral condemnation or punishment.
But simply for the sake of everyone’s safety.
Sapolsky extrudes upon this logic (ad nauseam) in support of expunging moral judgements and punishment from our legal justice system and moral psychology/philosophy.
Sapolsky asserts there is no such thing as free will, in that everything anyone (including me and you) thinks, feels and does is mechanistically determined by multivariate, evolutionarily and environmentally conditioned biological, psychological and socio-cultural causal factors.
Sapolsky spends 200 or so pages supporting this argument with copious evidence from multiple disciplines including behavioral neuroscience, endocrinology and psychology.
By the end of the argument.
You’re essentially hog tied.
You simply have to capitulate to at least some, if not most, but probably all of the arguments.
Sapolsky spends the next 200 or so pages deconstructing the legal system, and moral psychology more broadly.
If free will doesn’t exist.
And the preponderance of evidence indicates that it doesn’t.
At least not like we commonly assume.
Then there really isn’t any room for moral condemnation or punishment in our legal justice system.
And we sort of need to rethink that whole thing.
So there you go.
Neuroscience just rendered the three legged stool of (1) free will, (2) moral culpability, and (3) punishment obsolete.
Akin to phlogiston, elan vital and the geocentric universe.
If all of that sounds grim or tedious.
It’s not.
Sapolsky is witty, charming and erudite to the MAX.
As I’ve said in other reviews.
He’s a puckish rascal of an intellectual nonpareil.
I find him IMPOSSIBLE not to love.
And although this book covers MUCH of the same ground as his others. I think it’s his best to date. Completely worth reading. Even if it feels a little repetitive.
In sum.
I loved it.
I ❤️ Sapolsky.
5/5 ⭐️
At that time, seizures were viewed as a sign of the devil, and as such, epileptics (people with epilepsy) were very commonly accused of witchcraft and murdered for it.
Particularly if they also happened to be female.
At present, very few people would ascribe an epileptic seizure to moral or religious impropriety.
We view epilepsy as a neurological condition and therefore well outside the individual’s freely enacted volition.
Punishing someone for having a seizure or calling them weak willed or evil or worse just would not make sense.
Of course, we don’t let individuals with untreated epilepsy drive (at least not until six months from their last seizure).
But that’s not a punishment.
That’s just common sense.
Right?
Someone with an untreated seizure condition is at a high likelihood of loosing control of their vehicle.
We need to keep the roads safe.
By this logic (most people would agree) preventing one (unlucky) individual (with epilepsy) from driving in order to safeguard the public is overwhelmingly reasonable.
In this regard, the criminal justice system serves as the mechanism of constraint whereby the public welfare is protected via regulation of certain individual freedoms.
Not as a means of moral condemnation or punishment.
But simply for the sake of everyone’s safety.
Sapolsky extrudes upon this logic (ad nauseam) in support of expunging moral judgements and punishment from our legal justice system and moral psychology/philosophy.
Sapolsky asserts there is no such thing as free will, in that everything anyone (including me and you) thinks, feels and does is mechanistically determined by multivariate, evolutionarily and environmentally conditioned biological, psychological and socio-cultural causal factors.
Sapolsky spends 200 or so pages supporting this argument with copious evidence from multiple disciplines including behavioral neuroscience, endocrinology and psychology.
By the end of the argument.
You’re essentially hog tied.
You simply have to capitulate to at least some, if not most, but probably all of the arguments.
Sapolsky spends the next 200 or so pages deconstructing the legal system, and moral psychology more broadly.
If free will doesn’t exist.
And the preponderance of evidence indicates that it doesn’t.
At least not like we commonly assume.
Then there really isn’t any room for moral condemnation or punishment in our legal justice system.
And we sort of need to rethink that whole thing.
So there you go.
Neuroscience just rendered the three legged stool of (1) free will, (2) moral culpability, and (3) punishment obsolete.
Akin to phlogiston, elan vital and the geocentric universe.
If all of that sounds grim or tedious.
It’s not.
Sapolsky is witty, charming and erudite to the MAX.
As I’ve said in other reviews.
He’s a puckish rascal of an intellectual nonpareil.
I find him IMPOSSIBLE not to love.
And although this book covers MUCH of the same ground as his others. I think it’s his best to date. Completely worth reading. Even if it feels a little repetitive.
In sum.
I loved it.
I ❤️ Sapolsky.
5/5 ⭐️