I came to comment on the same core claim. Clearly people do change, we see it happen in our own lives. People undergo religious conversion, change their politic

I came to comment on the same core claim. Clearly people do change, we see it happen in our own lives. People undergo religious conversion, change their political views, decide to become vegetarian, give up a life of crime. Giving up a belief in philosophical free will doesn’t negate any of that. The physicalist view is that we are physical systems, and obviously such systems are entirely mutable. Determinism means I as a physical being choose my actions based on my knowledge, experience, preferences and other mental attributes. It means there is a direct causal link between my state and my choice. That’s responsibility. However it also implies that I am not entirely responsible for who I am. There are influences such as my genetics, hormonal balance, childhood environment, etc that affect my choices which are beyond my control. For me, what this implies is a humanistic approach to responsibility. It means humans are mutable, in practically applicable ways. In terms of justice it has lead me to a much more rehabilitative rather that retributional view on the role of incarceration. If people are fixable, if they can be helped, we should help them. The article is almost wilfully, deliberately obtuse on these issues. It’s basically the same argument as the old sore that without a belief in gods moral authority, there would be nothing to stop us from attacking, raping and stealing from each other. It’s literally only fear of god stopping us from falling into anarchy. In this case it’s only a belief in philosophical free will stopping us from, I don’t know, all acting like mindless zombies or something. It’s absurd.