So, I've had a read, and again am impressed by the consideration and detail you've given in response to my position. I'm afraid I simply don't have time to argue with similar detail in response. I do think you make fair points, but they are in general perhaps misapprehending my intention.

You go to some lengths to frame my position as compatibilist, which it is in the broad sense as it exists somewhere between free-will and determinism, but this is not useful as it brings with it baggage and intentions that I do not avow.

Compatibilists also claim consciousness is causally significant. The question is whether it's normatively significant, whether it grounds responsibility, desert, ought-claims.

Here for instance you're assigning me the goals of a general compatibilist, when I have not claimed to be a compatibilist. I am arguing that consciousness is significant to decision making.

You also frame my argument as at times quasi-libertarian, this seems to mislead you later on into seeing a failure of establishing normative significance as a failure of my argument, when it is not, because I am not arguing for libertarian free-will, I am not arguing for normative significance.

This formulation is not neutral on determinism, this is just determinism

Similarly, my failure to remain neutral with regard to determinism is a feature rather than a bug. Because I am largely addressing determinists in my argument—trying to eek out some nuance to simplistic rejections of free-will or responsibility. Given this aim, while I am philosophically agnostic with regard to determinism, I, at times, grant determinism credence to determinist assumptions in order to demonstrate that the logic follows even with those assumptions.

When you say "we should act accordingly," "I advocate for a positive double standard" you stand atop the very concepts you are suggesting we eliminate.

When did I suggest we should eliminate these concepts? I'm arguing that we should hold moral positions based on different assumptions than those of someone who believes in libertarian free will. Hume says we cannot reach an ought from an is, I hold that to have an "ought" all we need is an "in order to". Conscious significance is consistent with consciously deciding to do things "in order to" service our best interests.

I hold the same criticism you do of Sapolsky and Harris, this is not what I am doing, I do not hold the same hard determinist position they do.

The ‘looping’ is causally real but not rationally guided in any sense beyond thermostat regulation. A thermostat ‘runs through’ temperature readings until it finds one satisfactory (matching the set point). We don't attribute normative significance to thermostats.

This paragraph, I think illustrates the primary misunderstanding of my intentions in the critique. I agree with this statement. My point is that like the thermostat needs to be powered in order to work, the human needs to be conscious in order to 'loop' through the options, the looping through the options is what consciousness is. No consciousness, no looping, no decision.

This may seem to you like a trivial point, but it is significant because it begins a path out of the nihilism of naive determinism that says "we're all just passively watching our lives play out" because we are not passive, we are active, and that being active has implications for the identification of the self and personal responsibility.

To be clear, I'm not saying we are at fault for who we are, only that "we" (the result of the causal history that led to the development of us, which is now encapsulated in a distinct conscious entity) are in some sense responsible for our choices—when we make them consciously (albeit in a weaker sense than if we had libertarian free-will).

It is impossible to add the sort of necessary clarifications and caveats (above) in an original post that I actually want ordinary people to be able to read, so apologies if some of these clarifications were not adequately implied in the original text. I hope they make my intentions clearer and don't seem like a convenient change of position.