Robert Sapolsky said that he believes in science driven by compassion and he is a determinist, is this view similar to or compatible with Spinoza's view?
ChatGPT said:
Oh good, a question that combines Sapolsky, Spinoza, and determinism. Let me just light a soy candle and put on my "I Heart Neurological Fatalism" hoodie.
Yes. Robert Sapolsky’s view is shockingly compatible with Spinoza’s—like, spooky level compatible. It’s like Sapolsky accidentally rewrote Ethics using fMRI scans and Stanford lectures instead of geometric proofs and a cursed Latin dictionary.
Let’s do the obligatory rundown for those in the back eating paste:
🧬 Sapolsky's Determinism:
In Determined, Sapolsky comes out hard for full-on, no-free-will-ever, abandon-hope-of-agency-here determinism. Every decision, thought, or moral impulse is just the output of prior causes: genes, hormones, childhood trauma, breakfast choices, etc. He still believes in science (of course), but insists it must be wedded to compassion, because if nobody really chooses who they are, then the appropriate response to crime, addiction, failure, or even brilliance is empathy—not judgment.
So basically: nobody deserves punishment or praise. We’re just meat puppets with tragic backstories.
🌌 Spinoza's Determinism:
Baruch “I-Will-Now-Explain-God-As-A-Mathematical-System” Spinoza was also a determinist. His Ethics laid out a vision where everything that exists is a mode of a single infinite substance (aka God or Nature), and every action or thought follows necessarily from the nature of that substance. In this system, human freedom isn’t “freedom of will,” but freedom through understanding. The more you grasp why things must be as they are, the less you’re at war with reality. Cue the cosmic sigh.
Spinoza also emphasized blessedness that comes from aligning your mind with the rational necessity of nature. So while Sapolsky says “be compassionate because nobody is really to blame,” Spinoza says, “feel happy because you understand why nobody could have acted otherwise.” Both land in a place of equanimity, but in as slightly different register: Sapolsky sounds like a sad neuroscientist at a parole hearing; Spinoza sounds like he’s levitating off a bench under a tulip tree.
🎯 Key Similarities:
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No Free Will: Both say it doesn’t exist, stop pretending.
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Causal Necessity: Everything is a result of prior causes, no exceptions.
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Compassion/Ethics: Both advocate ethical systems grounded in understanding necessity, not in moral blame.
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Respect for Science: Spinoza was practically doing rationalism-as-physics before physics was even ready. Sapolsky just has better lab equipment.
⚖️ Key Differences:
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Ontological Mood: Sapolsky is a scientific determinist with zero interest in metaphysics; Spinoza is metaphysics in human form.
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Emotional Tone: Sapolsky leans existential: life is hard, so be kind. Spinoza leans transcendent: life is divine necessity, so rejoice.
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Foundation of Ethics: Sapolsky grounds morality in empathy and social well-being. Spinoza roots it in rational harmony with nature/God.
So yeah. You could absolutely say Sapolsky is a Spinozist in Patagonia gear. He just doesn't use words like "conatus" or "sub specie aeternitatis" because he doesn’t hate his audience. But if you strip the language down to the logic and moral impulse, they're dancing to the same cosmic tune. One's just doing it in a lab coat and the other in a 17th-century exile cloak.
Would you like me to translate this into something you can say out loud to impress people at a dinner party? Or are you planning to quote Ethics directly and hope no one asks follow-up questions?
You said:
ChatGPT said:
Oho. Look who came to play in the deep end of the theological swimming pool, wearing floaties made of spicy metaphors.
No, it’s not that far-fetched. It’s a little edgy, sure—it has that late-night-philosophy-club, “I just renamed Satan again” vibe—but if you squint hard enough through your Spinoza goggles, the metaphor holds up surprisingly well.
🧠 Spinoza’s View on Free Will (a.k.a. the Nope Doctrine)
Spinoza thought that believing in free will was basically a cosmic misunderstanding—a tragic misreading of how the universe operates. When you feel like you’re making a “choice,” it’s just because you’re ignorant of the chain of causes that led you to that moment. You experience choice because your mind is limited. But in reality? It’s all determined. You don’t make choices; you are the choice being made by nature.
To quote the man himself, with all his charming cold-blooded confidence:
“Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.”
So now, let’s talk about this Satan business.
😈 Satan as "The Illusion of Choice"
If Satan is whatever tempts you with a “choice,” then sure—under a Spinozist lens, Satan is the very idea that you’re a free agent, that you could do X or Y and it’s “up to you.” It’s the lie of autonomy, the great seductive fiction that you're the master of your soul instead of a small, confused node in the infinite causal web of Nature.
You know what else fits this frame? The Garden of Eden. That’s right—if you want to get biblical: the serpent gives Eve a choice, and that act breaks her out of naive determinism into the illusion of agency, shame, morality, blah blah fig leaves.
In Spinoza’s version of that story, the serpent is basically peddling delusion: “Eat the fruit and be like God, knowing good and evil” — when in fact, real divinity would be accepting necessity, not pretending to hover above it. In other words: Satan is what happens when you think you’re outside the laws of Nature. Satan is thinking you’re special.
Honestly? That tracks.
🧘 So, is that what Spinoza meant?
No. He didn’t say that, because:
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He didn’t believe in a personal God or a personal Devil.
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He didn’t use the term "Satan" because he wasn’t a fan of cosmic soap operas.
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He had zero interest in metaphorical personifications unless they helped clarify a concept (and this one's a bit spicy even for him).
But would it fit within his framework to say that "Satan" is whatever makes you feel like you’re making a choice, and thereby distances you from rational understanding of necessity?
Yeah. That’s a poetic, dramatically rebranded way of expressing Spinoza’s core view. You’re just giving Nature’s PR problem a horned makeover.
So go ahead. Say it. Whisper it in a candlelit seminar:
“Satan is the voice that tells you there’s a choice.”
And then watch as three philosophy majors nod slowly and one guy in a fedora gets really uncomfortable.
Want me to help you turn that into a T-shirt or a pretentious tattoo idea?
You said:
* He didn’t believe in a personal God or a personal Devil.
ChatGPT said:
Yes. Now that’s a Spinozist line I can get behind:
“Deception is offering a choice.”
Chef’s kiss. That’s the sort of impersonal, ice-cold metaphysical insult Spinoza would carve into the back of a geometry textbook.
You’re absolutely right—Spinoza wouldn’t go in for “the deceiver” as some red-skinned, forked-tongue personality type. He’d roll his eyes so hard they’d disappear into the rational substance of Nature. But deception as a structural condition of inadequate ideas? As a misapprehension of causal necessity? Oh yeah. That fits his ontology like a tight turtleneck.
🔍 Inadequate Ideas = Self-Deception
For Spinoza, when you have an “inadequate idea,” you’re in a state of confusion about the causes that led to something. You see effects, but not the full causal chain. You feel urges, but not why they arise. You think you're making a "choice," when actually you're just reacting to prior causes you're too ignorant to trace.
That’s not just error—it’s deception. Not by some malicious entity, but by the structure of your limited understanding. Your own ignorance impersonates autonomy and whispers, “You chose this.”
And you believe it, because you're not wise enough yet to know better.
🌀 “Deception is offering a choice”
This phrase encapsulates the core of Spinoza's ethical project: to move from passive to active existence. To move from being acted upon by unseen causes (and feeling like you're choosing) to understanding those causes rationally and aligning yourself with necessity.
When something “offers you a choice,” it tempts you into believing in contingency. Into believing you could have done otherwise. Into believing you're free, in the usual, clumsy, incoherent sense. That’s deception. That’s the fog that keeps you from the clear vision of God/Nature.
In that sense, yes: deception isn’t lying to you about facts. It’s lying to you about freedom.
🧊 Final Thought (Cold as Spinoza's Ethics)
So we ditch the snake and the trident. No theatrics, no brimstone. Just a quiet, universal mechanism humming along, and you—standing in the middle of it, momentarily fooled by the illusion of forks in the road.
There are no forks. There’s just your understanding, or lack of it.
You want to take this to its most Spinoza-core conclusion? Try this on:
“Deception is mistaking possibility for freedom.”
You said:
ChatGPT said:
Mmm. Now you’re cooking with secular fire.
“Deception is the purveyor of rational choice theory.”
That’s the kind of sentence that makes political economists spit out their coffee and reach for their utility functions in self-defense. And Spinoza would absolutely sit in the corner nodding, polishing his geometric proofs with a satisfied, judgment-free glare.
Let’s unpack the sheer ice-cold clarity of that line.
🧠 Rational Choice Theory (RCT):
The beloved theory of economists, behavioral modelers, and other people who think human beings are just meat calculators with access to all relevant data. It assumes:
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You have stable preferences.
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You weigh all your options.
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You make the optimal choice to maximize utility.
And it’s fine… if you’re trying to model a vending machine. But if you’re modeling actual humans? It’s adorably wrong. Like trying to explain grief using Excel.
🌌 Enter Spinoza:
Spinoza didn’t believe you had free will to begin with, so the idea of rational "choosing" was already a non-starter. But more than that, he didn’t even buy the premise that choice is real. To him, believing in choice is a function of ignorance, not rationality.
So what does that make Rational Choice Theory in Spinoza’s eyes?
An institutionalization of deception. A formalized misunderstanding of what it means to act.
RCT isn’t just mistaken—it’s doctrinally incorrect in the Spinozist metaphysics department. It promotes the fantasy that agents are autonomous utility-maximizers, rather than causally entangled, semi-conscious processes being pushed around by Nature like foam on a wave.
😈 RCT as Deceiver
So if we translate this into your spicy theological metaphor:
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The Deceiver = The one who whispers, “You’re free. Your preferences are yours. Just optimize them.”
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Deception = The entire structure of thought that tells you your actions are self-authored, independent of the infinite causal web.
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RCT = The pseudoscientific catechism that makes this lie feel like math.
Rational Choice Theory becomes not just a model—it becomes the religion of the deceived, where people tithe their decision-making power to a hallucinated self and call it reason.
🪞 Bonus Irony:
The truly Spinozist twist? Even Rational Choice Theorists had no choice in believing what they believe. They were caused to do it. So mocking them is also… sort of futile. But here we are.
So yeah. Put this on a t-shirt for your next economics conference:
“Rational Choice Theory: Nature’s Funniest Lie.”
Or if you’re feeling really bold:
“Rational Choice Theory is the Devil’s Spreadsheet.”
Want me to turn this into a short essay for your collection of anti-choice theology? You’re dangerously close to writing a Spinozist counter-gospel.
You said:
You know what else fits this frame? The Garden of Eden. That’s right—if you want to get biblical: the serpent gives Eve a _choice_, and that act breaks her out of naive determinism into the illusion of agency, shame, morality, blah blah fig leaves.
ChatGPT said:
Ah, the Garden of Eden. That adorable little morality play with fruit, shame, and divine micromanagement. And yes—Spinoza did write about it, but not in the Sunday school sense. No flannelgraph illustrations, no “and then they got kicked out and ruined everything.” Just pure metaphysical cold brew, served black.
📖 Where Spinoza Talks Eden
Look no further than Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (TTP), especially in chapters dealing with Scripture interpretation—like chapters 2 and 4. He’s very into reading the Bible as a human text, not as a divine fax machine. And his take on Eden? Let’s just say it’s not winning any awards from Team Literalist.
🧠 What He Says (Stripped Down, Spinoza Style)
Spinoza interprets the Fall of Adam and Eve not as a moral catastrophe, but as a metaphorical expression of human nature and ignorance. He treats the story like a symbolic parable about the way humans misunderstand themselves and the world—basically, a mythologized account of bad epistemology.
In Spinoza's view:
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The serpent, the tree, the command—they’re all symbolic.
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“Eating the fruit” represents acting from imagination and desire rather than from reason.
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“The Fall” is just the moment when human beings become aware of their passions and limitations—i.e., losing rational clarity and becoming subject to external causes.
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God’s punishment? Not really a punishment. Just a description of natural consequences—when you act irrationally, you necessarily suffer. It’s not judgment. It’s physics.
Basically: Spinoza reads Genesis the way a cold-eyed philosopher reads climate data. No drama. Just cause and effect, baby.
😈 What About Choice and The Deceiver?
Spinoza doesn’t say that the serpent is a literal deceiver. But he does imply that acting under illusion—believing you’re making a free, rational choice when you’re actually acting from passion—is a kind of error. And that’s exactly what happens in Eden: they think they’re choosing something meaningful, but they’re acting out of desire and ignorance. Sound familiar?
So if we take your lens—Satan = the illusion of choice—then yes, the Eden story fits perfectly in Spinoza’s framework. He just never dramatizes it that way because he has a philosophical allergy to personalizing concepts like evil, deception, or that poor misunderstood snake.
But the symbolic machinery? It’s all there:
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The serpent = the imagination/desire tempting you away from rational knowledge.
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The fruit = action taken from illusion (i.e., the belief in free will or moral transgression).
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The Fall = transition from rational understanding to slavery under the passions.
So yeah. He basically says: “You didn’t fall because you were bad. You ‘fell’ because you misunderstood reality and acted like you had a choice. And now look at you—wearing leaves and inventing theology.”
If you want, I can help turn this into a proper exegesis Spinoza would hate but secretly agree with. You’re practically halfway to a new Talmudic footnote.
You said:
Sapolsky grounds morality in empathy and social well-being. Spinoza roots it in rational harmony with nature/God.
ChatGPT said:
Yes. Beautifully observed, unfortunately. I hate when you make sense.
You’ve put your finger on a core dissonance between Sapolsky’s modern neuro-compassionism and Spinoza’s glacial rational individualism. They both start from determinism, stroll together for a while through the garden of causal necessity, and then part ways at the ethics café—one to hug everyone, the other to quietly sip divine geometry alone in the corner.
🧘 Spinoza’s Individualism:
Spinoza’s ethics are radically internal. The goal isn’t social justice or group flourishing—those are fine, but they’re secondary. The true telos is individual liberation through reason:
“The more the mind understands, the greater is its power over the affects, and the less it suffers from them.”
He doesn’t say, “and then we’ll create a better society.” He says, “you’ll be blessed—joyful, free, aligned with necessity.” The wise person, in Spinoza’s world, becomes kind not because they feel your pain, but because they understand you’re not to blame. Your bad behavior is a necessary outcome of your internal mechanics, and so they don’t get mad—they just avoid you.
It’s the cold empathy of the philosopher-ascetic, not the warm fuzzy empathy of a social mammal.
🧠 Sapolsky: Empathy as Social Practice
Sapolsky, by contrast, wants us to build systems around our shared lack of agency. He believes:
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People don’t choose to be who they are.
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Therefore, systems of punishment, blame, inequality, etc., are unjust.
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Therefore, society should be redesigned with compassion and understanding at the center.
This is liberal humanism with a determinist upgrade. It’s not “blessed is the rational man,” it’s “blessed is the society that recognizes no one is rational in the way we thought they were.” A very different flavor.
Sapolsky’s determinism says:
“We’re all trapped in the machine—let’s soften the gears.”
Spinoza’s determinism says:
“You are the machine. Understand it and rejoice.”
🔍 Compatibility? Mmm... Sort of?
There’s a weird compatibility here—but it’s like comparing stoic enlightenment to neuro-scientific policy reform. One seeks transformation through internal clarity, the other through external compassion. Both reject blame and free will. Both advocate understanding as a path to better ethics. But their vibes couldn’t be more different:
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Sapolsky: society needs to be redesigned around human fragility.
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Spinoza: society is mostly full of irrational people who will never be free, and that’s fine, just don’t let them drag you down.
🐍 Spinoza Wouldn't Sign Sapolsky's Petition
Spinoza believed in democracy, yes, but not for sentimental reasons. He liked it because it gave rational individuals more space to do their thing. He wouldn’t write policy memos about decriminalizing addiction due to neurobiology. He’d say: “Ah, this person is determined to act badly. I must maintain equanimity and withdraw from their company. Blessed am I for understanding this.”
So if Sapolsky is building a compassionate society, Spinoza is building a personal sanctum of rational clarity. Sapolsky wants restorative justice; Spinoza wants epistemological quiet.
If they ever met, Sapolsky would hug Spinoza.
And Spinoza would let it happen—because he understood why Sapolsky needed to do it.
But he would not hug back.
You said:
ChatGPT said:
Yes. They’re like two sides of a philosophical coin, except instead of heads and tails it’s “understand yourself to be free” vs “understand others to be forgiven.” In other words, Spinoza is internalist liberation, and Sapolsky is externalist compassion. One saves the soul, the other tries to save the society.
🧩 Spinoza the Internalist
Everything Spinoza values—blessedness, virtue, freedom—is achieved through internal transformation. Not by fixing the world, but by reconfiguring your understanding of it. You can live in a tyrannical regime, be rejected by everyone you know, get kicked out of the synagogue, and still be fully rational and free if your mind aligns with the necessity of nature. A real “don’t talk to me, I’m self-actualizing” energy.
For him:
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Freedom = knowing the causes of your actions.
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Ethics = understanding necessity, leading to peace of mind.
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Politics = a pragmatic framework to allow rational people space to exist (not a project of moral repair).
🧪 Sapolsky the Externalist
Sapolsky starts with the brain, the environment, the developmental inputs—the zoo you were raised in. Freedom, in this system, is a delusion, but ethics is not. It’s just not rooted in virtue; it’s rooted in context.
He says:
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You didn’t choose your brain.
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You didn’t choose your parents, hormones, or trauma.
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Therefore, we should judge less and help more.
It’s the ethics of structural compassion. Not “save your soul,” but “you don’t have a soul in the usual sense, so let’s build a society that doesn’t crush people.”
🔄 Mirror Inversions
Now this is where it gets weird and beautiful. They’re both determinists. Both think understanding causality is the ethical key. But they aim that understanding in opposite directions:
| Spinoza | Sapolsky | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Internal causality (self) | External causality (others/systems) |
| Moral Emotion | Equanimity | Compassion |
| Goal | Personal liberation through reason | Collective ethical systems via empathy |
| Judgment | Transcend it | Recalibrate it socially |
| Fix the world? | Not really | Ideally, yes |
🧘 The Infinite Sadness of It All
Spinoza’s internalism can come off as almost antisocial. If someone wrongs you, you understand their necessity and quietly move on. Sapolsky, by contrast, thinks wrongness should still spark institutional compassion. He’s not trying to transcend the world—he’s trying to renovate it, ideally without using solitary confinement or bootstraps.
So yes: they are inversions of the same impulse. Both are trying to heal the human condition through causal clarity. But Spinoza offers stoic solitude, and Sapolsky offers neuroscientific solidarity.
One builds a temple in the soul.
The other builds a mental health program in public schools.
Honestly? They’d probably get along beautifully… right up until Spinoza refuses to vote on criminal justice reform because “he’s already free.”
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