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Comment by naasking | Hacker News Reader

> To me the semantics of what one wants to call free will really don't matter and aren't worth much discussion, yet they seem to be primarily what gets discussed.

It matters quite a bit I think, because otherwise it's an impediment to communication. Just look around at all the pushback from unnecessary changes to language due to so-called "wokeness". If a term has a coherent conception and is mostly well understood and commonly utilized by people, I don't see the value in trying to change that language.

In this context, Harris is just one in a long line of people leveling this accusation that Compatibilism is changing the definition of free will, where it seems instead that it empirically matches how people actually use this term.

This is not to say that you specifically were making this argument, but it's been implicit (and sometimes explicit) undercurrent in this whole thread.

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> It matters quite a bit I think, because otherwise it's an impediment to communication.

It sounds like we agree on the problem but disagree on the solution. I would argue most of the impediment to communication on this subject is exactly because people are trying much too hard to brand a certain conceptualization "free will" and trying to delineate different contexts and scenarios far too little. It's absolutely worthwhile to clarify what context one is referring to when using the term. It's absolutely a waste of time to try and assert this context is the only correct context to do so.

I agree that we can find broad agreement on the facts if we replace "free will" with baggage-free terms, but this still leaves open the question of what people actually mean when they hold someone responsible for a freely made choice, and whether this is justified. Under Compatibilism it is, but otherwise it mostly isn't.

In my experience, everyone arguing about brains and the universe is trying to justify something like the Consequence Argument, in which I think my insistence on a Compatibilist definition of free will is justified.

> everyone arguing about brains and the universe is trying to justify something like the Consequence Argument

That hasn't been my experience at all, usually I see claims about the brains and universe being made from epistemic grounds, and indeed they are valuable in of themselves even if purely academic. The nature of our reality is worth discovering on its own merit, rather than just discarding in favor of saying that's not what we're really talking about (when indeed some of us are talking about that!).

All the more reason to be clear about context.

I agree that investigation into how the brain and the universe works is valuable. I was saying that whenever they are brought up in the context of a discussion of free will and moral responsibility it's because they're building up to a type of Consequence Argument. If you still disagree, then perhaps you can provide an example of what you mean because I'm not getting the distinction you're trying to make.

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