Just because there is debate surrounding a subject does not mean that the debate is reasonable. In many cases, it is more likely that the people doing the debating are being unreasonable. The global warming debate is a good example of this. One way of being unreasonable is misunderstanding each other’s terminology. This happens a lot in free will discussions, and I suspect it is also happening here. A way to get around this is to taboo certain words.
(Also, ‘evidence’ can have a variety of meanings and not all rational debates strictly require evidence. Mathematics proceeds entirely without any kind of evidence (in fact, evidential reasoning is discounted in mathematics)).
Just because there is debate surrounding a subject does not mean that the debate is reasonable. In many cases, it is more likely that the people doing the debating are being unreasonable. The global warming debate is a good example of this. One way of being unreasonable is misunderstanding each other’s terminology. This happens a lot in free will discussions, and I suspect it is also happening here. A way to get around this is to taboo certain words.
(Also, ‘evidence’ can have a variety of meanings and not all rational debates strictly require evidence. Mathematics proceeds entirely without any kind of evidence (in fact, evidential reasoning is discounted in mathematics)).