Why are we still bounded by the discourse of free will either of determinism or compatibilism?
The allegory of the cave explicitly says that from the beginning we are brainwashed to believe to see the shadows on the wall as reality.; this can be directly connected to epistemology as the fundamental mechanism of perceiving informations. Thus this means we are hypnotized to acquire knowledges in a specific way that decides how we view, use those aquired knowledeges; this leads to the concept of episteme by which Foucault explained how our mind unconsciously uses frameworks that was ready-made by historical conditions, surreptitiously assimilated by our mind, and which decides how the discourses would gonna be shaped.
If we consider about our reality of the allegory, and even philosophy itself, which was meant to liberate a human being from those yokes, deceptions, being assimilated to ourselves, thus without contemplating its essence, the problem becomes apparent.
Apparently modern people from modernized world know exactly what the allegory means, but if we took the allegory as an actual truth, this means we are inherently blocked from contemplating about this truth of being hypnotized and what does it mean to realize it.
For these reasons, there should be a fundamental difference between a person thinking outside of the cave and a person thinking inside of the cave, because the distinguishment can only be made clear when it is fundamentally, or transcendentally different as we can see from the difference between a philosophical zombie (whether it has qualia or not) and a human being.
I believe the same process was presented in Kant's distinguishment of the private use of reason, which he articulated as 'as this part of machine' and the public use of reason, which 'must be free.' I don't think this merely recite Frederick the Great's policy of "Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obey!" nor Kant only meant it as a scholarly attitude in public sphere; for Scholars themselves can be bounded by their own cave.
How the mere apperception, without being transcendental, without this distinguishment, works, which has happened throughout modernity, was presented blantantly in the Excursus II: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality and the Culture Industry in the Dialectic of Enlightenment.
"The intelligibility which subjective judgment discovers in any matter is imprinted on that matter by the intellect as an objective quality before it enters the ego. Without such a schematism-in short, without rhe intellectual element in perception-no impression would conform to the corresponding concept, no category to the particular example; thought, not to speak of the system toward which everything is directed, would be devoid of unity. ...
The true nature of the schematism which externally coordinates the universal and the particular, the concept and the individual case, finally turns out, in current science, to be the interest of industrial society. Being is apprehended in terms of manipulation and administration. Every thing-including the individual human being, not to mention the animal-becomes a repeatable, replaceable process, a mere example of the conceptual models of the system. Conflict between administrative, reifying science, between the public mind and the experience of the individual, is precluded by the prevailing circumstances. The senses are determined by the conceptual apparatus in advance of perception; the citizen sees the world as made a priori of the stuff from which he himself constructs it. Kant intuitively anticipated what Hollywood has consciously put into practice: images are precensored during production by the same standard of understanding which will later determine their reception by viewers. The perception by which public judgment feels itself confirmed has been shaped by that judgment even before the perception takes place. Although the secret utopia harbored within the concept of reason may have glimpsed the repressed identical interest which lies beyond the diverse accidental interests of subjects, reason, operating under the pressure of purposes merely as systematic science, not only levels out the differences but standardizes the identical interest."
"The active contribution which Kantian schematism still expected of subjects-that they should, from the first, relate sensuous multiplicity to fundamental concepts-is denied to the subject by industry. It purveys schematism as its first service to the cus tomer. According to Kantian schematism, a secret mechanism within the psyche preformed immediate data to fit them into the system of pure reason. That secret has now been unraveled. Although the operations of the mechanism appear to be planned by those who supply the data, the culture industry, the planning is in fact imposed on the industry by the inertia of a society irrational despite all its rationalization, and this calamitous tendency, in passing through the agencies of business, takes on the shrewd intentionality peculiar to them. For the consumer there is nothing left to classify, since the classification has already been preempted by the schematism of production."
It seems like in our present modern society of universality, we are being deceived by the facade of the private use of reason disguised as the public use of reason and are being precluded from the latter while being hypnotized to believe one is, indeed, free. Universality itself becomes episteme because of the rise of media and the internet, which assimilates into us an episteme of how to think, perceive a certain subject that communities are discussing about.
The allegory points to this as well, since if we are born inside the cave and can learn only from within the cave, this would definitely results into the problem of parroting. The Frost King incident of Helen Keller and the public's reaction against it is the direct evidence of this taking place.
Rousseau noticed this problem when he thought he would write "Emile," and what he was suggesting through that book is an acknowledgement of nature as uncorrupted teaching, as we can see later from Helen Keller, and save children being embedded in a prejudice. Because we didn't learn anything from this point and put our children to public school which makes them universalized, they were stripped of the individuality—for how many students we have in our world who thinks independently and not being embedded and corrupted by the structure? How many students can think outside of how students should think?
In reality, philosophy actually have gone through the discourse of modernity through this path since Kant—through Hegel, Schelling, Schiller to Nieztsche to post modernism, structuralism, Husseurl, Heidgger, Frankurt school, etc.
Schiller was the first one who opened the door on the possibility of harmony between the state of being determined and the state of determining—of not being merely determined by the private use of reason. Even though Nietzsche butchered him constantly through his philosophy, I believe he was not aiming for Moral Romantismcism like Schelling, Schlegel, young Hegel, but epistemological liberation for he proceeded the essay with clear epistemlogocial concepts from Kant and thinking.
Where are all this philosophy based on epistemology in the present discourse of free will?
Why have we fallen into the same historicism, positivism, against which these philosiphers noticed the problem, challenged and resisted?
Instead, It seems like philosophers have forgotten about thay they hadn't solved the problem within the epistemology, and moved on to the current discourse.
Philosophers made mistakes when they were dealing with epistemology, for they did not guage the public's capability of understanding or even noticing them, while their works have means only through such action.
Alongside with Kant, Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, Schiller's "Letters upon the Aestehtic educations of man" could have saved some men from dogmatic, dialectic Nihilism, but because of the distortion made by Hegel and his deciples, Nietzsche, etc. it was completely blurred from the public in terms of epistemological value.
Instead with the current discourse of free will, the newcomers who can only view it from the certain angles in which he grasped the problem, because of which he is stuck in it. It becomes the problem of sciences and logics whoose tools cannot even acknowledges the real problem that is urgently needed to be solved.
Maybe I'm naive to think like this for I am aiming for Idealism. I don't know any about the academic philosophy used in this subreddit or what achievements that can be made with those method; I just read some books.
But I definitely know this excerpt from Kant's essay on Enlightenment can be applied for many people in this subreddit:
"Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity."
Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the problem and open the possibility of free will even if we cannot solve the problem itself? The transcendental one like Husserul attempted to figure out? Or Foucault's permanent critique of ourselves and of our age?
By noticing the difference between historical episteme, we can understand others, who are dominated by different episteme than ourselves, better as well.