> Experiencing free will is all free will is. It would be nothing if not experienced. A god-like figure dictating reality without perceiving itself as doing so wouldn’t have free will because it wouldn’t experience itself as such.

The experience is necessary, but not sufficient. A god-like figure who doesn’t think they have free will wouldn’t meaningfully have free will, but neither would a non-god who thinks they have free will, because they’d still have to actually have free will in order to have free will.

I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of demonstrations that thinking oneself admirable is not sufficient to actually be admirable. Free will isn’t qualitatively different from that.

> I’m not saying that because I feel like a can genuinely alter the state of affairs of the world that I must therefore have it. I’m saying that I can’t do that, and I know I can’t do that, but I experiemce free will, so I can conclude that free will isn’t altering the state of affairs of the world.

It seems like you’re still not really addressing my central point. You don’t experience free will, so you cannot conclude that.

A stereotypical schizophrenia patient doesn’t actually experience voices. They experience the illusion of voices.

“I have a certain perception, and I have named that concept, and therefore the thing I just named is actually equivalent to a different thing with that name” is not logically valid.

> You’re morally responsible because you have agency, not because you can genuinely choose what happens.

We are caused to act for all intents and purposes like people are morally responsible for things, because we have to, practically. But that doesn’t imply actual responsibility.

> Why wouldn’t you just kill someone for $5? You aren’t responsible anyway.

Lacking moral responsibility is not the same thing as believing or acting like you lack moral responsibility, nor is it the same thing as lack of practical consequences for things that happen.

> But you know that you are. How do you reconcile this?

I know that I feel like I am responsible for my actions and that we have to act for all intents and purposes like we are. That doesn’t mean that we are.

> You realize that free will is not constituted by going against laws of nature.

Why does feeling like you have free will require you to conclude that there is free will?

Your argument is built on several unstated assumptions that are not obviously correct.

> That’s the point, we know we do have free will.

No, we don’t know this.

> If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to function,

Why would not actually having free will mean we couldn’t function?

> there would be no point to anything,

Yes. And?

> and ethical concepts would be meaningless.

Yes. And?

> on the one hand we have the science demonstrating for us that everything that happens is determined in some sense, and on the other we have human intuition, experience, ethics, and practical reason telling us (or necessitating) that we exercise agency of some kind. The challenge is in reconciling the two

But they can’t be reconciled. If reason tells us it’s necessary for us to exercise agency, that’s too bad, because we can’t. We are going to act like we can, but we can’t.

The existence of the field of ethics is one thing among many that both arose out of the past physical state of the universe, and will influence its future state, but not from any external cause - it’s all in the closed system. We’re pulled towards the earth because there is gravity, and someone might “decide” something in a certain way because they are aware of some ethical principle, and that contributed to what the particles in their brain do in the current moment. That doesn’t mean the principal itself has intrinsic value.

> If the state of the world at the present moment is completely determined by the preceding moment, then you can’t choose to have a glass of water, because that would mean defying the laws of realty and exerting a god like power.

I know. But nobody is saying “I wish I had the power to ignore physical laws”. They’re saying “if only things weren’t deterministic, because it would be kinda nice to actually have agency and be able to make choices”.

> be thinks that having agency means having control over reality in some way, making decisions that change the course of the world.

Taking something mundane like “I choose to have a glass of water now” and framing it as wanting to “change the course of the world” is a choice you’ve made to imply arrogance on the part of the speaker. Now anyone who argues that having free will is ideal looks like they’re saying they should have omnipotence.

> This is what I mean by god-like.

Why do you believe that only gods should have this power?

Any other conception of agency is useless to consider.

ayyyyyy

> If you’re arguing from a context in which “you” isn’t defined, then the notion of “will” — free or otherwise — is irrelevant.

If someone is arguing that we do have free will, surely “there is no will” is a valid way to counter.

> Of course they obey physical laws; the distinction is the series of reactions that could occur but don’t.

What do you mean “could have occurred”? If reality proceeds according to physical laws, only the things that did happen could have happened. If other things could have happened, they would have happened instead.

You could have acted differently to the way you did yesterday, sure. And the moon could be made of cheese.

> the ability to chart multiple courses of viable action and selecting one

But you’re not. You just have the perception that you are.

> Your argument seems to be that the chemical composition of my brain prevents me from doing anything but imagining those sentences,

Yes. The current composition as a result of all the interactions your constituent particles have had during your life.

> but my perception is that I could go on at length if I chose to do so

Our perception is not relevant to the issue.

> What’s the difference between “actually making the choice” and what’s being described: evaluating the options and selecting the one that best fits your criteria?

That’s not what’s being described. What’s being described is having the perception that “you” (whatever that means, since it’s all just particles) are an agent who is evaluating options and selection the one that best fits “your” criteria. Your perception of reality is not reality.

> It sounds like you’re arguing that “free will” is something that’s only discernible externally, regardless of the perception of the agent making the choice.

I’m arguing that the concept of free will does not make sense, and cannot exist. I suppose one could prove a being has free will by observing particles in its nervous system that don’t obey physical laws while it makes choices, but if we’re entertaining that idea then we have a lot of other philosophical and scientific problems.

> Dennett agrees with all of that… Dennett brings a far more subtle and important point to the table which he has coined “the freewill worth wanting.”

“I am a hard determinist, but I’m going to take this other thing that isn’t free will and call it free will, and argue that we have that instead (while not always making it clear that I’m not talking about actual “free will” despite using that phrase), as if that’s a meaningful thing to do”.

Going back to basics:

> Some "modern compatibilists", such as Harry Frankfurt and Daniel Dennett, argue free will is simply freely choosing to do what constraints allow one to do. In other words, a coerced agent's choices can still be free if such coercion coincides with the agent's personal intentions and desires.

If everything is determined, the concept of an agent loses all meaning. There is no agent who can make choices. There are just indistinguishable particles. Debating the nuances of what it means to “freely choose to do what constraints allow” is also internally inconsistent if you accept determinism, because we don’t make choices. What we’re left with is “free will is simply having the perception that you are an agent who is capable of choosing to do something that you think is an available choice”, which is just worthless as a position. It means nothing.

> He thinks anything outside of imposing god-like powers of control over the world is not free will.

Your perception is so warped that you think the desire to be able to make a simple choice is born of god-like arrogance. If you are representative of philosophy as a field, then Harris is right to disregard its self-indulgent and contrived definitions here.

> If an individual does not have real control/agency over their actions, how are those actions truly their fault?

Exactly. They’re not. We recognise this in the justice system in many ways already. Many jurisdictions give sentence reductions to people whose childhoods were shaped by traumas, or who have mental health difficulties, for example.

> Culpability is out the window.

Whether the person is culpable for the action (or whether the idea of a person is even physically meaningful), and whether we should apply a judicial consequence for it, are not the same question.

Why are you asking these questions in a way that implies they disprove the idea that we lack free will?

> All that matters is that we think we have agency, and that we conduct and judge ourselves as if we do,

But this is circular. If we don’t have agency, then we don’t conduct ourselves. We are conducted as if we have agency.

> What do you want from a “free” choice besides the opportunity to apply your criteria to a circumstance and subsequently act in a manner to best satisfy that criteria?

To have actually made the choice, obviously.

> So what’s the point of denying the existence of free will? To be technically correct about the relationship of cause and effect but in doing so wholly misrepresent the fundamental way that we actually experience reality as subjective participants within it?

Our experience of reality is not reality.

It seems to me your argument boils down to “everyone is indistinguishable from a P-zombie, but we should pretend that the fact that we each experience consciousness means that the fact that we each experience consciousness makes a difference, or is meaningful”.