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You say materialists have given up, but isn't it the opposite?
Materialism has become the base state that all other claims need to beat to be considered; and the strongest free will claim is especially weird.
Re. incoherent: you are describing compatibilism, which is what I hold: there is no free will in a mystical, 'my decision are unconstrained in some essential way' but there is free will in practice.
EG, I think that you are absolutely constrained by your history and the nature of experiencing time as a three dimensional creature. When you can choose, you only choose one thing and looking at it from a 4th dimensional perspective, you could imagine your life as a written narrative. That said, you still experience free will and I believe that free will as a concept still exists. Just because every decision you will ever make and have ever made could only have been made as you made them, doesn't mean those decision still didn't happen.
Basically, if you refer solely to the experience of free will, then yes it exists. If you claim that you can make a decision that isn't wholly the result of your nature and your history, what the fuck does that even mean?
On this specific issue, no. Two centuries' worth of previous Materialists made bold, highly falsifiable claims about the non-existence of free will. Such claims served as the theoretical basis for multiple revolutionary ideologies, as well as dominating the field of Psychology for decades. These claims were thoroughly falsified, but their intellectual polution continues to inflict harm to this day.
More generally, also no. Hard Materialism is not observably verifiable, and is not required to conduct scientific or engineering pursuits. It seems to me that even many people who self-identify as "Hard Materialists" are not actually hard materialists, any more than people who attend church on Christmas are "Christians".
Okay. What novel, falsifiable predictions does this idea allow you to make? Can you actually predict or manipulate what people will do, the way you can predict and manipulate a screwdriver or some other piece of dumb matter?
What part of it is confusing? What falsifiable predictions does claiming otherwise allow you to make, that can't be made equally well without claiming otherwise? Skinner claimed that if you gave him control of a child's environment, he could make that child into anything he wanted. He and his disciples tried and failed. Marx claimed that the revolutionary reorganization of society would create New Soviet Men, thus solving crime and war and poverty forever. He and his disciples created half a world of horror and despair. Do you think you can do better? Does observing a pattern of failed predictions shift your priors, or is that just for claims one does not personally favor?
Aren't all those objections kinda pointless? Also, why are you talking about Skinner and Marx? Shouldn't you be talking about Nietzsche and Schopenhauer?
I can't make those predictions, because it is impossible for me to have that information. But the information exists, and the events happen.
I am making the non special claim that all matter behaves as matter, and all energy behaves as energy. Basically, that there are no special cases. If you are making the strong claim for free will, you are claiming that all matter behaves as matter, and all energy behaves as energy; except for the bit that is inside the skulls of humans.
Why should I believe this strong claim, and how do you back it up?
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