Rick Repetti is a philosophy professor, meditation teacher, and author of several publications on free will (find more of Rick's work below).

Rick’s website: https://www.rickrepetti.com/

Awaken to meaning: https://awakentomeaning.com/

American Philosophical Practitioners Association: https://appa.edu/

In this podcast, we are critiquing Sapolski’s “determined” steel manning his case with the philosophy of determinism and showing how human beings possess the “degrees of freedom worth having” and how wisdom and spiritual traditions offer tools to enhance our agency.

Check out the conversation 👇

https://youtu.be/AJGyeZkGFLo

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction and Sapolsky's Argument

04:19 Critique of Sapolsky's Argument

07:31 Legacy of Newtonian Causality

09:45 Determinism and Free Will

11:13 Indeterminism and Free Will

16:46 The Dialogical Self

19:40 Meditation and Self-Conditioning

26:28 Ultimate Moral Responsibility

32:37 Self-Forming Actions and Free Will

37:18 The Dialogical Self and Agency

42:02 Attention and Agency

48:00 Cultivating Agency through Meditation

51:05 Opponent Processing and Evolution

52:07 Attentional Flexibility and Imaginary Attention

53:01 Simulating Other Minds and Counterfactual Reasoning

54:07 Simulating the Future and Rational Deliberation

55:07 Taking Processes Offline and Online

56:32 Rational Agency and Thinking

57:03 Liver Enzymes and Rationality

57:29 Simulating Ideas and Writing

58:25 Inhibition and Simulation

59:33 Attentional Deficit and Meditative Practices

01:00:15 Organizing Behavior Across Time

01:01:14 Prudential Reasoning and Agency

01:02:11 Debating Sapolsky and Future Projects

01:03:37 Philosophical Practitioners Association and Book Club

01:05:43 Philosophy of Meditation Series and APA Courses

01:06:08 Weekly Meditations and Starter Ecology of Practices