Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Written by Robert M Sapolsky

Narrated by Kaleo Griffith

The instant New York Times bestseller

“Excellent…Outstanding for its breadth of research, the liveliness of the writing, and the depth of humanity it conveys.” – Wall Street Journal

One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences

Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.

Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works—the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody’s “fault”; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession.

Yet, as he acknowledges, it’s very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.


*This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF containing Tables, Charts, Diagrams, and Footnotes from the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Oct 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9780593153253

Robert M Sapolsky

Robert M. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including A Primate’s Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. His most recent book, Behave, was a New York Times bestseller and named a best book of the year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” He and his wife live in San Francisco.

Reviews for Determined

[Chung Park · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Massive amounts of life-changing, useful information. But it’s long-winded and heavy handed. Probably could be 1/3 shorter and would be more impactful. Dr. Sapolsky could re-release this book with the help of a better editor and reach a wider audience.

[vguy_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Is this fellow on some intoxicating substance? Always a lively read but here Sapolsky has become manic, hysterical, hyper. His thesis: free will is an illusion. What is the relevance of detailed, lengthy descriptions of various torture and executions over the centuries? The difference between hanging/ drawing/quartering versus electrocution versus lethal injection? He spends quite a lot of space on brain scans research showing that most of our decisions can be seen coming some fractions of a second before we actually do them. How that makes a difference to free will is not clear to me. It’s still my decision even if I don’t know about it and it happened a moment ago. Lurking somewhere in there is a confusion between free will and consciousness which he doesn’t really explore. The breadth of his reading is impressive and the whole thing gallops along in quite a fun way with the occasional joke lighting it up. And al fin y al colmo, I agree with him. well, that's what I've decided.

[booksfordinner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Agree with most everything in here...can be a bit tough-going, but Sapolsky is very funny!

[markm2315 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't think I've read anything by the author before. I heard him on Sam Harris' podcast. There doesn't seem to be anything philosophically new here (I wrote the same thing in an Anthropology blue book in 1972 and the TA gave me a D and wrote a vulgar comment.); macroscopic determinism excludes free will. But what I enjoyed so much was the author's careful development of his argument and the huge number of small neuroscientific, behavioral, psychological, and evolutionary facts that he uses. I liked his use of epilepsy, schizophrenia, autism, and obesity as examples of the progression of our understanding of these conditions (and I was reminded that tuberculosis was considered a disease of artists, wayward women, and Jews before the discovery of Mycobacteria, and that gastric ulcers were considered a stress-related illness common in white bankers before the re-discovery of Helicobacter pylori).

The second part of the book is Sapolsky's look at the consequences of living in a world in which the absence of free will was accepted. Although he shows that some changes might be possible, especially in his review of the Norwegian penal system, changing the view of other aspects of our life, e.g. Are we really ready to say that all of our personal achievements are due to chance?, are enormously challenging. To say nothing of the effect on Hollywood if revenge movies were seen as ridiculous.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an amazing book; I don't think I have ever learned as much from one book as I did from this one. As a non-scientist, it was not an easy read, despite an eminently readable (and frequently very funny) prose style. It was well worth the effort, however. So much for the matter of the book, what about the conclusion? That is very challenging, as the author acknowledges. I find myself in the odd position of intellectually accepting his arguments, but emotionally ignoring them. I think the idea of no free will may take quite a while to move from my head to my heart, if it ever does.

[waldhaus1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thought provoking and mind expanding.
I am reminded on the statement I have heard attributed to Schopenhauer:” you may do as you will but you can’t will as you will. I wonder of rather than full determinism we should compare this to Feynman’s particles that follow a course set by probability. To some extent the author speaks to that idea. Still off one ours fortunate enough to have opportunities perhaps believing in free will incentivizes trying to be one’s best or as the marines say: be all you can be. “