u/ughaibu

Medical science recognises psychogenic pathologies, that is diseases whose causal origins are entirely mental, and medical science also recognises diseases of entirely physical causal origin, for example those occasioned by poisoning. In other words, unless there is a well motivated independent reason to quarantine medical science and hold that it does not employ methodological naturalism, science implies property dualism, at least.
Accordingly, as both idealism and physicalism are inconsistent with dualism, each of these implies the supernatural. However, the idealist needn't be committed to naturalism, so this problem only impacts the physicalist, as the truth of physicalism implies the truth of metaphysical naturalism.
To be clear, I am not contending that methodological naturalism implies metaphysical naturalism or vice versa, only that science, and therefore physics, does not support physicalism. In fact, physics, as a science, supports the falsity of physicalism.

I'll assume that for all relevant cases only the guilty are punished and that by nature punishment involves harm, so all punishment involves non-trivial harm.
One stance is that retributive punishment cannot be justified because the harm is non-instrumental, but this stance ignores the history behind retributive theories of punishment.
The justification for state administered retribution is that it is third party, the state is a member of neither the in-group of the perpetrator nor the in-group of the victim, so a retributive act by the state can avert a revenge war between the two groups.
So, as BDMR is only relevant in the case of non-instrumental harm, it is irrelevant to the case against retributive punishment.

As I'm consistently informed that I don't understand BDMR, is multifarious ways, I am currently deepening my familiarity with the matter.
One thing that has already struck me is that the contention that the answer to the question of whether anyone ever deserves harm, purely as a consequence of a moral transaction, is sensitive to questions about the free will of the transgressor, appears to be mislocated. Particularly in the context of which, if any, is the correct theory of punishment, surely what matters is the behaviour of the punishers, not the transgressors.
If so, the question that so-called "free will skeptics" would do well to address is this: which is the free will required for punishers to implement the correct theory (if there is one) of punishment?
After advancing arguments supporting the candidature of various independently well motivated notions of free will, the free will skeptic will then be in a position to argue that none of the candidates is the free will required for punishers to implement the correct theory of punishment, regardless of what that might be.

If I pay my escort to harm me, and it is in the contractual terms offered by the escort service that I'm employing that their operative will, having been paid the agreed sum, undertake to harm me, then surely I deserve to be harmed, and deserve so purely because I entered the contract and performed the act of paying.
In other words, the free will of contract law is a free will that justifies the infliction of harm, on an agent, purely because of that agent's actions, it is a free will that justifies basic desert.

I take strong scientific realism to be the proposition that every object essential to the construction or employment of our best scientific theories is an object that appears in the ontological inventory, in other words, every such object, if abstract, exists, or if concrete, has at least one instance.
In conjunction with the principle that we should endeavour to hold all and only true beliefs, strong scientific realism commits us to the soundness of indispensability arguments, that is arguments concluding that if positing x is essential to our best science, x exists.

Non-Euclidean geometries play an essential part in GPS navigation, so, by an indispensability argument, one of the things that a strong scientific realist is committed to is that space is non-Euclidean, however, liquids or gasses in equilibrium entail the Pythagorean theorem, and the Pythagorean theorem is equivalent to the parallel postulate. As the first law of thermodynamics ensures, on pain of perpetual motion machines, that liquids and gases have a state of equilibrium, the strong scientific realist is also committed to the stance that space is Euclidean.
Here we have a choice, we can appeal to the principle of non-contradiction and hold that as strong scientific realism, in conjunction with the principle that we should endeavour to hold all and only true beliefs, commits us to the belief that space both is and is not Euclidean, strong scientific realism is false. Alternatively, if we accept ontological pluralism, that space both is Euclidean and is not Euclidean, we can preserve strong scientific realism.

But this latter move has an interesting consequence. As Euclidean and non-Euclidean metrics are distinct, an ontologically pluralistic world, of this type, does not have a definite description, and if a world is determined, then, at all times, that world has a definite global description. So, strong scientific realism, in conjunction with the principle that we should endeavour to hold all and only true beliefs, commits us to the stance that determinism is false.

We might offer an argument structured like this:
1) if the world is non-empty, then P or not-P
2) if P, the world is empty
3) if not-P, the world is empty
4) if the world is non-empty, then the world is empty
5) the world is empty.
When they first see this kind of argument a person's initial reaction is often to point out that if the world is empty, then the above argument doesn't exist, so the argument is self-defeating and the conclusion must be false.
But this is to entirely miss the point, because of course the conclusion is false, nobody is suggesting otherwise.

If the conclusion of a valid argument is false, one of the premises must be false, and in classical logic, if a premise is false, it's negation is true. In other words, when we are faced with a valid argument for a conclusion that is false, we are committed to the truth of the negation of one of that argument's premises, and as we might want to avoid asserting the truth of that proposition, that we are committed to doing so is described as a cost.
Philosophy is very much the business of establishing the costs attached to endorsing various propositions, what is important isn't just what you think is true, it is what you are intellectually committed to by thinking it to be true.

All healthy human adults unavoidably assume the reality of their free will and they demonstrate the reliability of that assumption hundreds of times every day. So, the cost of accepting an argument for the unreality of free will is that we are radically mistaken about our everyday assumptions and abilities, including our ability to demonstrate that an assumption is more plausible than its denial. I don't know of any argument for the unreality of free will that doesn't have premises that can be denied for a lesser cost, do you?
On the other hand, what is the cost of accepting that things are as we unavoidably assume them to be?

Part I: contra Wigner.
Wigner began his The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences by pointing to an unexpected appearance of pi in population statistics, however, the probability of two randomly selected non-zero natural numbers being co-prime is 6/pi^2 in other words, pi appears whenever there are two unrelated numbers, so it is actually more extraordinary for pi to not make an appearance in the natural sciences, and particularly not to make an appearance in statistics.
Part II: ineffectiveness.
By the age of five or six we are expected to be able to correctly write expressions such as 6 x 2 = 12, this is about as simple and uncontroversial as mathematics gets. Now let's divide both sides by 12: (6 x 2)/12 = 1, and now divide both sides by 6: 2/12 = 1/6, this still seems to be free of any controversial moves, so simplification of fractions appears to be justified by the simplest and most uncontroversial of mathematical methods.
But suppose you're one of a party of twelve exploring an underground cave system, and amongst the twelve there are exactly two members, neither of which is you, who know the way out of the cave system. If a section of roof collapses and divides the members into two groups of six, there is no guarantee that you will be in a group of six that includes one of the members who knows the way out, so the above simplification is not justified, in fact, we appear to need some species of axiom of choice to justify simplification, and there are few things, in mathematics, more controversial than the axiom of choice.
But what if you're in a group of twelve Minoan youth sent into the cave system to appease the Minotaur and in this case there is exactly one member who knows how to kill the Minotaur and exactly one distinct member who knows the way out, and again, neither is you? Now if the roof collapses the axiom of choice is fatal, and simplification generally is fatal, as it guarantees that both groups will be without an essential member.
Part III: development of the thesis.
In the spirit of a meta-mathematical investigation, filling in the content of this section is left as an exercise for the reader.

The principle that one has the right to defend oneself is difficult to dispute. So, if there is an identifiable agent who is causing one harm, and the only way to defend oneself from this harm is to inflict greater harm, the principle of self defence appears to sufficiently warrant adoption of the stance that there are occasions on which an agent can be identified as the one who deserves harm.
As far as I can see, this is independent of any position on free will, if so, then whether anyone deserves blame or harm is an issue separate from free will, consequently, if moral responsibility requires the reality of free will, the question of the deserving of blame/harm is not a question about moral responsibility or free will.

I often read, on this sub-Reddit, that libertarianism is incoherent, but this isn't plausible.
Libertarianism, about free will, is true if there is free will and this entails the falsity of determinism, so, if the world is such that there is free will and determinism is false, the world is consistent with the truth of libertarianism. Science is highly inconsistent with determinism^0 and science requires researchers who can exercise free will^1 so science is consistent with the truth of libertarianism, accordingly, either science is incoherent or libertarianism is not.
The notion of "incoherence", usually touted, is on the lines that everything is either determined or probabilistic, and libertarianism requires behaviour that is neither determined nor probabilistic. But the dilemma between determined and probabilistic is one that only occurs in certain mathematical models of our own creation, so, without a convincing argument for the conclusion that we inhabit one of this proper subset of mathematical models of our own creation, this notion of incoherence is misdirected. At best it warrants the conclusion any libertarian theory of free will, that employs one of these mathematical models, will be incoherent, but we have other tools in our explanatory repertoire, so this accusation of incoherence doesn't hold any water.

In any case, why should we think that whether the libertarian is correct or not, is a matter arbitrated by any explanatory theory? The relationship ordinarily moves from facts to explanations, not from explanations to facts, so we have no good reason to think that the mere existence of a fact entails the existence of an explanation.
Unfortunately, in the west, we have inherited cultural baggage from a theological tradition in which the world was created by a perfectly rational, omniscient god, so we tend to take on, unexamined, the assumption that the world is fully comprehensible, as its creator is perfectly rational, and the assumption that everything about the world can be known, because its creator is omniscient. However, from a naturalistic stance we have no better reason to think that the world is fully comprehensible to or knowable by human beings, than we have to think that the world is fully comprehensible to or knowable by ravens, and we don't think the latter, so we shouldn't think the former.
Recall that both science and determinism are naturalistic, science employs methodological naturalism and determinism requires metaphysical naturalism, and from the above it should be clear that demands for explanations have no justification based on either science or the assumption of determinism.

A further point, that is often overlooked, is that compatibilism is consistent with the falsity of determinism. So, if libertarianism were incoherent because free will cannot be explained, given the falsity of determinism, compatibilism, without soft determinism, would also be incoherent.

On this sub-Reddit we often see the accusation of redefining terms levelled at compatibilists, here I suggest we look at two conspicuous examples of outrageous redefining performed by Pereboom and Caruso.
1. a redefinition of "blame" to mean harm, specifically, when ostensibly asking "do offenders deserve blame?", they're actually asking "do those who inflict harm deserve harm in return?".
2. a redefining of "yes" to mean no, specifically, when asked about certain well motivated notions of free will they will explicitly agree "we have free will", yet they advertise their position as "no free will".

Things are, at any time, exactly the same as they are at that time. So, things now are exactly the same as they are now, and the question is could I have done otherwise and things be exactly as they are now?
As you no doubt appreciate, I can write a word, delete it, and then write again the same word, and as you also no doubt appreciate, I can vacillate as to whether or not to delete a word. This post contains various words that I may or may not have thought about deleting and for any of those words it may be true that I actually did delete and rewrite them, nevertheless, the post is exactly as it is. So, given the way things are, I could have done otherwise.
The challenge for the compatibilist is to give a convincing story about how these different pasts are metaphysically consistent, with the self-identity of the present, if the world is determined.

A lot of posters, here, are concerned with "retributive justice", a notion captured by the phrase an eye for an eye, specifically their position is that there is no well motivated non-question begging definition of "free will" that describes the free will that would be required to justify retribution, but this appears to be false.
Etymonline states "Originally "that which is given in return for past good or evil," but modern use tends to be restricted to "evil given for evil done." Or, as characterised by the likes of Pereboom, the dispensing of harm as a penalty for the infliction of harm. But suppose that someone stole a significant amount of money or property from you, I think most of you would agree that you have been harmed by this, if so, then to force a convict to return significant amounts of stolen money or property is to dispense harm in return, it is, by definition, the administration of retributive justice, and anyone who thinks that a thief cannot be harmed by being deprived of money that they themself stole has very little understanding of the motivations for theft.
At school, in biology class, we pupils each dissected an eye, so there must had been somebody whose business it was to provide eyes. Suppose that the school reneged on their contract and refused to pay this eye dealer, if the matter came to court I think it is likely that restitution would be ordered by the presiding magistrate, the school would be compelled to return an eye for an eye, or the cash equivalent, plus costs. But if so, then contract law justifies retribution to the extent of an eye for an eye, and clearly we have the free will required for contract law, even Pereboom has explicitly said so. So, the stance that retributive punishment cannot be justified appears to be straightforwardly false.

. . . that an agent only deserves blame if their actions are "free from factors beyond their control, such as the remote past".^0
Let's assume that's true:
1) an agent only deserves blame if their actions are free from the remote past
2) human beings evolved in the remote past
3) from 1 and 2: human beings never deserve blame
4) I am a human being
5) I have deserved blame
6) from 4 and 5: not 3
7) from 3 and 6: not 1.

Is this idiocy really meant to be the interesting discussion?

Determinism is global, either everything is determined or nothing is, so, when we play an abstract game all our moves are determined, they could not be other than they are, nevertheless, games are fun, they're worth playing more than once.
Here's a game that you can play, with a partner, pretty much anywhere and anytime: the first player says "left", the second player says "right", the first player says "centre", the second player says "left", the first player says "right", the second player says "centre", and this sequence repeats until one player either makes a mistake or refuses to continue, importantly, this latter condition applies to refusal to answer the first "left".
As determinism is true, we have as much input into the play as we have were we, instead, playing bridge or chess, so I expect the game will be just as interesting. Perhaps you think the interest of playing a game derives from the player's role as a witness to the game unfolding, if so I suggest that you play the game whilst watching a gripping thriller or whilst learning to sing a song in Yoruba, or some other unfamiliar language, this will add another element of excitement by increasing the incidence of lapses in concentration.