So I dont believe in free will ,through a combination of experience and events in my life(most to do with leaving religion) however like most, I recognise the need for the concept of free will, as artificial as it may be
But where to draw the line. Obviously, even for people that believe in free will, where they draw there line is different among each other e.g across cultures, generation and among individual, but what do you do when you know that line is just artificial.
For example, alots people say that trauma doesn’t excuses abuse, only contextualise, it but if you have statical evidence that a large or even most of abusers have been abused/been through a traumatic event that is by defined an excuse.
I believe in causal determinism and personally I still believe in free will, because in a hypothetically undetermined existence where we have this magic power to make a decision, it makes an impact whether or not I believe in it. In a determined existence whether I’m aware of it or not doesn’t matter as it’s already determined.
When it comes to laws, ethics and judgements, I don’t think there is a clear solution, since all of this is built on the idea of free will and specifically accountability. We have this weird line, because only with time we took some levels of determinism into account for judging an action, e.g. psychological determinism.
I’m not sure where my line is. I guess in practice it makes sense that we can only consider determining causes where we can describe the events that lead to the action in detail (that too is vague and contextual). E.g. Tourette causing someone to say the n-word is more direct, clear and definitive than a traumatic event leading to abuse. Then again, it also means my lack of (specific) information in the chain of causation decides how I view someone.