There is no sense in which the will is free, but we may feel free to the extent we are ignorant of causality, and the word will alone is sufficient for discussing that experience.
You need nothing but that sentence to understand literally everything about free will that matters.
Really interesting! So if I understand this debate correctly: If determinism is true, a person could not have acted differently in that moment where he/she did something wrong. If they could not have acted differently, it seems wrong to say they deserve suffering. Compatibilists say: “We still have responsibility because blaming people is useful. But that’s not real desert; that’s just social engineering. The question becomes: Do we have any REAL moral responsibility left, or only practical reasons to influence behavior?Do we only have practical reasons to influence behavior?
This is exactly where the philosophical fight happens.
Free will skeptics (Pereboom, Harris, Caruso, Sapolsky) say:
This text is not really participating in the free-will / desert debate at all.
It comes from a completely different worldview — a spiritual-psychological model where crime is understood as a symptom of inner pain and societal fragmentation, not as an issue of free will or moral desert.
It essentially skips the entire debate about determinism vs. free will and instead reframes crime as:
An expression of wounded consciousness, trauma, fear, and disconnection — not a morally blameworthy act that someone “deserves” to be punished for.
It brings a totally different perspective, but not one that answers the free-will argument.
It is not a compatibilist argument and not a skeptic argument.
It’s a third category: a spiritual-therapeutic reinterpretation of crime (not sure exactly what to call it)
But from a local perspective, it is not known whether a domino will fall.
How people reason about and react to the potential of falling dominos is a property that emerges from a system of dominos without perfect knowledge about the dominos themselves and their surrounding inputs.
Incompatibilism is actually the thing that does not make any sense -
Really enjoyed this — especially the clarity around moral desert and the way you separate metaphysics from pragmatic responsibility. I agree we need to challenge shaming language and the assumption that people “just deserve” suffering.
One question it raised for me, though, is whether debates like this sometimes compress decision-making into too thin a slice of the process. We end up focusing on a single “moment” where the domino falls, even though most of the cognitive work that shapes action — prediction, valuation, memory, embodied state, learned threat and relief — is happening long before anything reaches conscious awareness.
At that scale, the causal web feels too vast and distributed to map cleanly onto a moment of “could have done otherwise,” even as a thought experiment. It makes me wonder whether what people are really gesturing at with free will isn’t located in the final executive moment alone, but in how systems shape and update those deeper predictions over time.
That doesn't lead me onto a path that says free will is non existent, just that the "free" part may be smaller than we'd like to admit and heavily influenced by the state of the overall system.
Not a rebuttal — just a curiosity about whether the framing itself sometimes narrows the phenomenon we’re trying to explain.
Thanks for commenting. My sense is you’re passionate about reducing unnecessary harm and you’re adept at systems thinking. That’s wonderful. Can you try commenting again in a way that addresses the core ideas in the piece you agree or disagree with so that we can have a productive discussion? It’s not even that we necessarily disagree about things, it just so far seems like we’re not talking about the same things. Happy to change the subject but I don’t follow your thinking. This piece isn’t about gender hierarchy or recompense for past wrongs. I’m not suggesting it’s an unworthy topic just that it’s not what I’m talking about at all here.
There is no sense in which the will is free, but we may feel free to the extent we are ignorant of causality, and the word will alone is sufficient for discussing that experience.
You need nothing but that sentence to understand literally everything about free will that matters.
Really interesting! So if I understand this debate correctly: If determinism is true, a person could not have acted differently in that moment where he/she did something wrong. If they could not have acted differently, it seems wrong to say they deserve suffering. Compatibilists say: “We still have responsibility because blaming people is useful. But that’s not real desert; that’s just social engineering. The question becomes: Do we have any REAL moral responsibility left, or only practical reasons to influence behavior?Do we only have practical reasons to influence behavior?
This is exactly where the philosophical fight happens.
Free will skeptics (Pereboom, Harris, Caruso, Sapolsky) say:
→ Only practical responsibility survives.
→ True desert is impossible under determinism.
Compatibilists (Dennett, Frankfurt, Strawson) say:
→ We don’t need deep desert.
→ It’s enough that responsibility is useful and connected to reasons.
→ Punishment doesn’t have to be metaphysically “deserved.”
Now consider this: https://substack.com/@consciousophy/p-168536411
This text is not really participating in the free-will / desert debate at all.
It comes from a completely different worldview — a spiritual-psychological model where crime is understood as a symptom of inner pain and societal fragmentation, not as an issue of free will or moral desert.
It essentially skips the entire debate about determinism vs. free will and instead reframes crime as:
An expression of wounded consciousness, trauma, fear, and disconnection — not a morally blameworthy act that someone “deserves” to be punished for.
It brings a totally different perspective, but not one that answers the free-will argument.
It is not a compatibilist argument and not a skeptic argument.
It’s a third category: a spiritual-therapeutic reinterpretation of crime (not sure exactly what to call it)
It's simple: The domino must fall.
But from a local perspective, it is not known whether a domino will fall.
How people reason about and react to the potential of falling dominos is a property that emerges from a system of dominos without perfect knowledge about the dominos themselves and their surrounding inputs.
Incompatibilism is actually the thing that does not make any sense -
https://ramblingafter.substack.com/p/to-understand-free-will-flip-a-coin
Really enjoyed this — especially the clarity around moral desert and the way you separate metaphysics from pragmatic responsibility. I agree we need to challenge shaming language and the assumption that people “just deserve” suffering.
One question it raised for me, though, is whether debates like this sometimes compress decision-making into too thin a slice of the process. We end up focusing on a single “moment” where the domino falls, even though most of the cognitive work that shapes action — prediction, valuation, memory, embodied state, learned threat and relief — is happening long before anything reaches conscious awareness.
At that scale, the causal web feels too vast and distributed to map cleanly onto a moment of “could have done otherwise,” even as a thought experiment. It makes me wonder whether what people are really gesturing at with free will isn’t located in the final executive moment alone, but in how systems shape and update those deeper predictions over time.
That doesn't lead me onto a path that says free will is non existent, just that the "free" part may be smaller than we'd like to admit and heavily influenced by the state of the overall system.
Not a rebuttal — just a curiosity about whether the framing itself sometimes narrows the phenomenon we’re trying to explain.
FEMALES DID NOT EXPERIENCE FREE WILL ON THIS EARTH FOR 26000 YEARS OF PATRIARCHY! YAHVE FUCKIN OWE US SOMETHNG BACK! 😡
Thanks for commenting. My sense is you’re passionate about reducing unnecessary harm and you’re adept at systems thinking. That’s wonderful. Can you try commenting again in a way that addresses the core ideas in the piece you agree or disagree with so that we can have a productive discussion? It’s not even that we necessarily disagree about things, it just so far seems like we’re not talking about the same things. Happy to change the subject but I don’t follow your thinking. This piece isn’t about gender hierarchy or recompense for past wrongs. I’m not suggesting it’s an unworthy topic just that it’s not what I’m talking about at all here.