RJG -
If free-will does not exist, then we have no choice in the actions we take. Our actions therefore are just auto-reactions that are then consciously realized. Although we may be "physically" responsible, we certainly are not "morally" responsible for these actions.
As an example, when the doc hits your knee cap with the little rubber hammer, your leg auto-reactively kicks outward. Certainly you would not claim that you are "morally" responsible for 'auto-reactively' kicking the doc in the shin, ...right? ...in other words, although you can't deny "physically" kicking him, BUT you can deny "intentionally" or "morally" kicking him.
If there is no free-will, then there is no "morality" or "moral responsibility". Our 'dislike' of this fact, is not relevant to its truthfulness.
Of course. The key word being “if” which you have a tendency to omit presenting your thoughts as if complete and/or irrefutable.
My position is simple enough. I am not saying that we do have free will for sure only that we act as if we do and that to take on the role of someone not living with free will at all (as a dogmatic and unsubstantiated belief) is immoral. To add, and repeat, I would argue that it is also immoral to suggest - as religious zealots tend to do - that they are some extremely important individual in the greater universal picture; basically taking on the opposite role to saying “no free will” and saying instead “free will, choice, and responsibility for all human actions and taking on the burden of humanity upon their shoulders in the belief that they are all important and correct.
To take on the belief that there is no morality is a type of nihilism. I’ve nihilism is a path to something “fuller” if followed through. Most just stop there and assume it to be the end of the road because that scheme of thought generally makes further thought easier to avoid/ignore.
In regards to the OP I simply say “Beware of anyone saying free will doesn’t exist.” In some ways I can mostly agree that “free will” doesn’t exist - the emphasis being in the parenthesis here; there are some subtle differences that people use to define the term.
There is certainly no “feel good factor” or “fairy tale” involved in denying a singular position as absolutely true when it is both unproven, against basic human intuition, and if correct absolutely pointless in “believing in” much like it is pointless to belief in a fact that most birds can fly to serve as a meaningful point from which to base your life on.
It is not “dislike” of the idea that we have no free will, it is the utterly fruitless adherence to the idea when it is both impossible to prove and if taken on faith a denial of human life if true - the choice to belief you have no free will is everyone’s. It is simply illogical, immoral and pointless so why bother with it? It could be decided by way of some form of nihilism that human life is both pointless and meaningless and then to use that as a reason to abscond from a belief in free will due to a general disbelief (or general lack of emotive concern with) huma existence ... it’s not my personal philosophy though, and it is certainly a subjective position I can appreciate yet I find it wanting for numerous reasons logically, morally and intuitively.
If the question underlying all this is some drive to find “knowledge” then first examine what it is you mean by “knowledge” and what equivalent to “knowledge” may be to you if you had no language with which to communicate ideas to others and remained in a mostly locked in state existing and acting without a tangiable symbolic forom of inner expression that we have here - and by which we’re able to communicate.
Any doctor worth anything would be one kicking themselves. It is hardly fair to compare reactions to conscious decisions (by decisions I mean a process that has at least mean made in the brain rather than the leg). There are many intermediataries between these and that is where neuroscience is still exploreing - not to prove or disprove, simply to explore and understand.
