In light of all this discussion about the soul, I thought this interview with Robert Sapolsky was relevant. Sapolsky is a fierce opponent of free will which he defines as a behavior that has just occurred, completely independently of the brain’s history (including genetic history).

Actually, as James Flynn has hinted, the closest science has come to proving Sapolsky’s definition of free will is “non-shared environment” which psycholgists define as the correlation between identical twins raised together subtracted from the correlation between the same person measured twice on some phenotype. Since that former correlation measures both genes and the only environment you were raised in, the fact that it’s still less than the correlation you have with yourself implies there is something about you that transcends both your seed and the garden you were planted in. 

Of course Sapolsky would scoff at the idea of calling this free will, as there are all kinds of environmental affects independent of the family you were raised in such as peer groups, that special teacher who inspired you, the media etc. Indeed Jensen argued that shared environment was a great many mico-biological effects like getting punched in the head in the playground to getting less oxygen in the womb. However until non-shared environment can be explained, it continues to be described as “luck” and luck is just unexplained variance. What’s interesting is that while shared environment goes from about 40% of the variance to zero as we move from childhood to later adulthood when it comes to IQ, non-shared environment stays at 20% across the life-span which as Flynn noted, is exactly what you’d expect from “luck”.

Speaking of IQ, our very own Anime (aka Illumanaticatblog) had some random thoughts on the WAIS he wanted to share: