Garrett’s Reviews > Free Will Explained: How Science and Philosophy Converge to Create a Beautiful Illusion > Status Update

They killed the elephant out of an emotional desire for revenge, not self preservation.

"If hard determinist are right, there can't be anything inherently unpredictable "

Again, he narrowly missed the point at the end of page 63 claiming morality is pointless to a hard determinist.

Final paragraph on p52 is gold.

He is so so close in Verdict to getting at the truth. Free will is a social concept used as a means to justify punishment and revenge. The idea of free will is dangerous for that reason, as the elephant would learn. A world without free will would be forced to rely on social reconditioning rather than social punishment.

I like his explanation on how a libertarian soul being the carrier of free will must also be deterministic. If it were indeterministic it would be completely random. There would be no reason to action.

I think I reached the core of Barkers ideas "I am a determinist who thinks it is still okay to use the term free will". Yes, this all seems like linguistic gymnastics.

If a person is alone in a forest and nobody is around to judge him, does he make a free will? Apparently not. According to Barker, free will is a product of a decision plus judgement of that decision retroactively.

Logical levels made little logic. Basically, the assertion from the loser in chess was that only physical objects exist, a checkmate is not a physical object, therefore a checkmate does not exist. But the premise that only physical objects exist is incorrect. Concepts are a tangible thing, just like a mathematical process is a thing. 2+2 is not a physical object itself, but a concept of addition that is very real

False Dichotomy: "Free will is neither deterministic nor indeterministic"

This seems, to me, to be nonsensical. Like saying, "The grass is neither green nor not-green."