I think we completely agree about all of this, then. I’m just letting the terminological confusion that was introduced by Ian C’s comment muddy my own attempts at articulating myself.
I guess the point I was trying to make was that, regardless of the result—free will exists, or free will doesn’t exist—there’s no reason to think that this result would have anything to do with the question of whether reductionism is a good research programme. We would still attempt to reduce theories as much as possible, even if free will was “magic”.
The part about “what current reductionists believe”—I assumed that most reductionists think of free-will as nonexistent, or an illusion. So the hypothetical case where free will does exist (magical or otherwise) would leave them hypotheically wrong about it.
Myself, I’m a fan of Dennett’s stance—might as well call the thing we have “free will” even though there’s nothing magic about it. Sorry for the long string of muddled comments. I’ll try thinking harder the first time around next time.
I think we completely agree about all of this, then. I’m just letting the terminological confusion that was introduced by Ian C’s comment muddy my own attempts at articulating myself.
I guess the point I was trying to make was that, regardless of the result—free will exists, or free will doesn’t exist—there’s no reason to think that this result would have anything to do with the question of whether reductionism is a good research programme. We would still attempt to reduce theories as much as possible, even if free will was “magic”.
The part about “what current reductionists believe”—I assumed that most reductionists think of free-will as nonexistent, or an illusion. So the hypothetical case where free will does exist (magical or otherwise) would leave them hypotheically wrong about it.
Myself, I’m a fan of Dennett’s stance—might as well call the thing we have “free will” even though there’s nothing magic about it. Sorry for the long string of muddled comments. I’ll try thinking harder the first time around next time.