Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Most readers will surely know by now that I am what is known as an "incompatibilist." I believe that determinism as to human behavior is incompatible with moral judgment.  Today, though, I would like to simply quote a gentleman who recently made the case for compatibilism in the comment section of another blog. It is a very well put statement of the point, and I'll quote it today without further comment or contention.  -------------------------- A woman goes into a restaurant, sits down, peruses the menu for a minute, and then calls the waiter over to give him her order. We cannot see what is going on in her head. But, assuming she has a normal brain, we expect it to be similar to what happens when we do the same thing, read a menu, evaluate our options, and place an order. We call this empirical event “choosing”. Options are presented, evaluated by some comparative criteria, and a choice is output. So, we know what happened (a choice was made) and we know ...

A passage from PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLANATIONS (1981). "In what other way, if not simulation by a Turing machine, can we understand the process of making free choices? By making them, perhaps. We might interpret those theorists who pointed to our choices not as trying to prove that we made free choices but as ostensively explaining the notion, showing its intelligibility. Were they saying that we understand free choice and agency by virtue of making free choices as agents? To accept a (restricted) form of knowledge by acquaintance, encompassing knowledge of a mode of action and of ourselves, runs afoul of views that we know something only when (and to the extent that) we know the laws it obeys. However, even if such views are rejected the nature of this other mode of knowledge, by self-acquaintance, is unclear." I don't always agree with Nozick. Indeed, I have been saying so since the late 1980s at latest. But he often seems to me to write in the way that a philosophe...