Diehard Determinists Opposing Free Will

I mentioned a biology professor against free will, and here is another. They are both hard-core determinists who say the only scientific view is that free will is impossible.

Free will is mostly a philosophical issue, so I can understand scientists saying that it cannot be resolved. Or I can understand most people who believe in it because they experience it in everyday life.

But most academics writing on this subject fall into one of two camps.

(1) Compatibilists like Dan Dennett, who say that free will is scientifically impossible, but it would be bad for the public to find out, so they propose a way to believe in it anyway. It is like saying that it is good for society to believe in God, even though there is no God.

(2) Hard-core determinists, who say everything is determined, and free will is just a harmful illusion. Sam Harris goes so far as to say that he does not even have a feeling of free will.

What is baffling to me is how all these professors live their lives as if they have free will, and they seem very smart, and their arguments make no sense.

People are responsible for their acts in the sense that they are the people who do the acts, and that leads to the idea that those people need, for their own sake and society’s, to be punished or rewarded. Punishment is still justified under determinism to keep criminals out of society, to give them a chance to be rehabilitated, and (to most) as a form of deterrence. ...

Finally, praise is as justified as punishment, for praising people for some actions, even if they had no choice, will almost always lead them to perform more good actions, because we’re evolved to appreciate praise, which raises our status. In the end, though none of us have choices about how we behave, we go about our lives feeling as if we did, and that’s enough for me. ...

I don’t think we should go around telling people that the classical notion of free will is true. Although I’ve been kicked out of a friend’s house and also threatened by a jazz musician for defending determinism (in the latter case by telling him that his saxophone solos were determined rather than improvised under free will, so that he could not have played a different solo), I’m still a diehard determinist. ...

But because notions of free will still permeate our justice system in a bad way, yes, I think everyone needs to think about determinism and accept the science buttressing it. Then we can go about our everyday lives acting as though we have choices.

There is no science buttressing determinism.

If no one has any choices, then it is impossible to improve our society. It is all determined. There is no point in trying to give people incentives, or deterrence, or praise, or punishment. You cannot choose a policy for the common good, because you cannot make choices.

And I don't see what good it is to act as if we have choices, when we do not.

Descartes said, "I think therefore I am." The argument proves that we have free will, to my satisfaction. Maybe not to you. Maybe you are schizophrenic, and have to follow the voices in your head, or maybe you are like Sam Harris, and took too many psychodelic drugs.

Regardless, it is 100% wrong to say that there is any scientific argument against free will, and 100% wrong to think that we can do anything to improve society if we have no free will.