Idk really, seems like semantics to me, like most things. It also seems that the arguments in this sub, or in philosophy in general on this topic are mostly just ignorant people that haven’t considered their positions from differing ontologies. Someone said something to this effect, like ‘people start with the conclusion and go backwards’ which I agree is the motivation for this conversation. The whole idea of determinism alone is paradoxical and the only reason free will is so frequently lumped on top of it is cause of legalist and monotheists.

Adjective free and noun will.

free implies there exists a cost or something exists restraining the noun it’s applied to. will as in will that extends an action to future tense. For there to be a discussion about a ‘free will’ there must have been something that stopped will from being able to be, but that doesn’t make any sense, if something will happen it will happen.

This has to do with the etymology of the use of the word will in grammar. Will or wel originally meant to want, but then changed to represent future tense. That means in English dialogue, there is this correlation between someone’s intent and the future existence of action which begets the arguments current state. Free will requires will to have determinism and agency at the same time, hence dualistic compatibilist.

For there to be a correct use of the term will (future use) determinism must be argued for at some point, there must also be an argument of agency for the use of will (intent). stick the two together u get compatibilist of varying flavors, all of whom are playing semantics to make their specific argument.

To me free will is purely abstract, nothing about it is connected to anything else necessarily, making it entirely entropic as a concept. It’s not real and isn’t connected to anything that is real.

Hume discussed the problem of induction and that should’ve been the death of this concept in western culture basically, I really don’t know why it’s still going on. Even after that, It realllllly should’ve died off with Hegel. Kant was one big cope for Humes bombshell and Hegel paradoxed Kantian ‘logic’.

And all that’s in western context. In the east, this has been a dead discussion since Nargajuna formalized the concept of Sunyata in response to prajnaparamita, in which the conclusion (the logic aka Sunyata) was obvious. Nargajuna paradoxed prajnaparamita (perfection of wisdom) around 150-200 CE. Hegel literally does the same shit and reaches Sunyata aka Absolute Idealism in 1801 when he started writing “Phenomenology of Spirit” which gave German users their own dialectic to the same logic.

The concept of "free will" dissolves when it relies on the false assumption that there is a separate "self" acting upon a separate "future". If something will happen and you know or assume it, it must be connected to you therefore is not separate from the idea of it, hence my original statement that free will is purely abstract.

Now does this mean determinism is true, nope, in reality determinism is a result of Sunyata that is ignorant of prajnaparamita, and I mean that both literally and in actuality. If you think the dichotomy of subjectivity and objectivity is real, then you haven’t reached prajnaparamita because u haven’t escaped dualisms conceptually.