u/GeneStone

They are real in the sense that they exist in reality, and they are accurately described as crystals.

They also heal.

People use them with the intention of improving their psychological state. Many report positive effects on their mental well-being. They can provide comfort, support rituals, improve mood, reduce stress, and help people regulate themselves emotionally.

Stress affects physical health. So if crystals help someone reduce stress through ritual, comfort, attention, or expectation, they can have real effects on well-being.

If the intention is psychological healing, and the ritual helps produce that effect, then they are healing.

In fact, crystals and stones have been used in ritual, medicine, religion, and healing practices for thousands of years. Their healing properties have been discussed, studied, and documented across countless cultures and traditions.

So healing crystals are real.

Maybe you are now telling yourself, “Sure, under that definition, healing crystals are real. So what?”

Well, now you believe in healing crystals. You accept that healing crystals are real.

So the next time someone scoffs, go ahead and tell them you actually do believe in healing crystals.

And when they object, you can explain:

“Just because some people think crystals are magic does not mean crystals lack healing properties under this usage. If they help heal psychological wounds, then they are healing crystals.”

And if they still resist, you can press the point.

"What, so only magic healing crystals are real healing crystals? The ones built on real psychological effects you already accept do not count because what, you just do not like the label?"

Or better yet:

"You're just a crystal enthusiast in denial. There is no conceptual difference between our positions. You accept that healing crystals are real. You just don't like the labels. Fine, relabel healing crystals to whatever you want, but you accept the underlying concepts so you do believe in healing crystals."

The reality is that when most people object to healing crystals, they are not objecting to the existence of crystals. They are not objecting to calming rituals. They are not objecting to the fact that stress affects health.

They are objecting to the stronger belief people actually hold, defend, sell, and act on.

They are objecting to the version where people forgo medical treatment, replace evidence-based care, and end up suffering because of it.

So yes, you can add your caveats. Yes, technically, “healing” can be used in a broad psychological sense.

But surely you realize that you do not agree with those people, and they do not agree with you. The concept has not been vindicated just because the phrase has been thinned out.

If someone can reject the disputed belief, accept every underlying fact you point to, and then be absorbed into your position by definition alone, that is not a victory.

That is the point where some self-reflection is probably in order.

Maybe the definition is not clarifying the disagreement.

Maybe it is dissolving the disagreement by moving the label.

Compatibilists often react strongly when someone says they have “redefined” free will. The response is usually some version of this:

“We are not redefining free will. This is one of the established definitions. Compatibilism has a long history.”

There is no problem with granting that.

Ancient philosophers discussed fate, agency, responsibility, assent, voluntary action, and what depends on us. Some arguments resemble later compatibilism and incompatibilism. But that project was different in structure and content from the modern debate.

If your criticism of compatibilism depends entirely on saying “that is not the real definition of free will,” then the criticism is weak. Compatibilists are allowed to use one established definition of free will. They are allowed to appeal to an established tradition. They are allowed to say their usage is one contested usage among several.

That does not settle anything.

The real question is what the concept adds.

A person can define God as the universe. That may be an established form of pantheism. But it does not show that the word “God” adds anything useful beyond “the universe.”

The fact that pantheist or proto-pantheist views have a long historical record does not tell us whether the view is true, useful, or conceptually necessary. It does not show that anyone should accept the content of the view. It does not show that the content belongs exclusively to that view. It also does not show that critics are confused just because they reject that usage of the word “God,” or that everyone who accepts the universe is a theist.

Likewise, a person can define free will in terms of reasons-responsiveness, deliberation, rational capacity, voluntariness, or freedom from coercion. That does not settle the free-will debate. It only raises the question of what “free will” adds beyond those underlying facts.

The fact that proto-compatibilist views have a historical record does not show that modern compatibilist vocabulary is true, useful, or conceptually necessary. It does not show that the underlying content belongs exclusively to compatibilism. And it does not show that everyone who accepts some version of deliberation, intention, capacity, voluntariness, and non-coercion is a compatibilist.

The more interesting questions are:

• What does “free will” explain?
• What does it predict?
• What does it justify?
• What distinction does it mark that could not be marked more clearly by speaking directly about intention, deliberation, capacity, voluntariness, reasons-responsiveness, coercion, evidence, risk, proportionality, deterrence, rehabilitation, protection, and likely effectiveness?

Some concepts can survive revision. When biology abandoned élan vital, it did not abandon the distinction between living and non-living things. Élan vital was a mistaken explanation of life. It was not the opposite of life, and it was not the whole content of the concept.

The concept of life still does real work. It tracks a biological cluster. It supports prediction. It organizes inquiry. It marks an important distinction between a cat, a tree, a bacterium, a rock, a corpse, and a chair. There are edge cases, like viruses, but the edge cases do not erase the usefulness of the concept.

That is not what happens with many compatibilist accounts of free will.

On those accounts, “free will” is cashed out in terms of intention, deliberation, reasons-responsiveness, rational capacity, non-coercion, self-control, or ordinary psychological functioning.

But then the question is: what does the label add beyond those facts?

With life, listing the underlying facts does not exhaust the concept. Metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction, adaptation, cellular organization, and evolutionary continuity help explain why something counts as alive. But “alive” still marks a higher-level distinction that matters.

With free will, many compatibilists seem to mean nothing over and above the underlying facts. Once you have listed the capacities, the label is exhausted.

Worse, adding the label reduces resolution.

If I say someone intended an act, understood the consequences, was not coerced, had normal cognitive capacities, responded to reasons, and can be deterred or rehabilitated, I have said the relevant things directly.

If I compress all of that into “they acted of their own free will,” I have not added clarity. I have thrown multiple distinctions into one disputed and historically loaded term.

So the issue is not whether compatibilists are allowed to define free will this way. They are.

The issue is whether the term earns its keep.

“Life” earns its keep because it marks a real and useful distinction that survives the rejection of vitalism.

“Mens rea” earns its keep because it distinguishes intention, knowledge, recklessness, negligence, capacity, and compulsion in ways that matter legally and practically.

“Free will,” on many compatibilist definitions, does not do comparable work. It names a bundle of underlying facts, then makes those facts less precise.

If every practical distinction the compatibilist wants to make can already be made with intent, reasons-responsiveness, capacity, coercion, evidence, risk, proportionality, deterrence, rehabilitation, protection, and likely effectiveness, then “free will” and “moral responsibility” are not doing any work.

They are labels placed on work already done elsewhere.

This is why the “compatibilists and incompatibilists agree on everything except the words” move is more damaging than many compatibilists seem to notice.

If incompatibilists are compatibilists in all but name, then the name is doing no substantive work.

And if the name does no substantive work, the question becomes whether it is worth keeping. At some point, the constant maintenance of an idle concept becomes part of the evidence against it.

If a concept is historically loaded, closely associated with retributivism and basic desert, constantly in need of clarification, and exhausted by the very facts it is supposed to organize, then preserving it starts to look less like conceptual necessity and more like a system-preserving preference.

This is also why I do not think incompatibilists need to preserve the phrase.

The phrase "acted of their own free will" presents itself as a positive explanatory category. In practice, it often just means that no recognized defeater has been introduced. The person was not coerced, not compelled, not incapacitated, not deceived. But that is a default practical assumption, not a theory. The phrase signals the absence of disqualifiers. It does not identify something present.

This is fine as ordinary shorthand. Language is full of expressions that work by exclusion. Saying someone acted freely in casual conversation often works the same way. It signals that no relevant defeating condition has been introduced.

But expressive utility is not philosophical precision, and the two are often in tension here. When the phrase moves from casual shorthand into philosophical and legal contexts, it carries freight that the underlying facts do not require. The historical association with basic desert and retributivism remains attached to the phrase when stakes are high. Stripping that freight out requires constant qualification, which is itself a sign that the term is working against you.

If you name the relevant facts directly, you get more precision and less baggage. You lose nothing except the label, and the label was doing no work that the underlying facts were not already doing more cleanly.

So refusing to use the phrase is not evasion. It is a preference for resolution over compression.

That does not make compatibilism false by itself. But it does change the burden. The compatibilist has to show that the term earns its keep, not merely that it has a pedigree.