Reddit reviews Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law)
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> Thanks for the tip, but I'm not even sure what you mean by "authoritative". A good argument is a good argument and I believe Sam makes a good one, but I will check him out.
Harris's arguments concerning free will are terrible and virtually no one reasonably educated on the issue takes them seriously. See the section "Harris Makes Bad Philosophical Arguments" here.
> But this definition if circular and vague.
It isn't circular, and it is vague only because it is meant to be theory-neutral. A vague definition is all you're going to get when you're arguing against vaguely defined group of people.
> "Responsibility" is something we get from the belief we have free will. The definition of "moral" is vague in that we do have a definitive definition of what is moral and what is not. Utilitarianism? Categoricalism? Communitarianism? Libertarianism?
You don't need any specific account of normative ethics to make the concept of "moral responsibility" intelligible. It can be "being worthy of praise or blame for doing the right or wrong thing, whatever the correct account of right and wrong turns out to be". The question doesn't depend on a specific account of 'right' and 'wrong' just like the question "does 2x^2 > 5 have any solutions in natural numbers?" doesn't depend on what the specific value of 'x' is.
> But are the person and the self separate?
What do you mean by "self"?
> And how do we know that how someone chooses to control himself is not controlled by environment?
What do you mean by "controlled"? What do you mean by "environment"? Why are you asking?
> If there is scientific data that starkly contradicts the concept of knowledge presented, I would reject that also
How can any scientific data contradict the concept of knowledge? Concepts are not physical entities that can be tested in a laboratory. Also, you haven't presented any definition, but you surely believe that there's such thing as "knowledge".
> The concept of knowledge, I'm sure, is not as contested as free will.
There's been an enormous problem with defining what "knowledge" means since Edmund Gettier's 1963 paper showed that there's a serious problem with the widely accepted definition of "knowledge". So we have no good definition of "knowledge", and yet people are not running around screaming "KNOWLEDGE DOESN'T EXIST". We still use the concept every day and the majority of philosophers would agree that "knowledge" is a thing, even if we can't precisely define it. Same goes for free will (or not, because there are several specific account of free will).
> I am not asking that we abandon free will completely. I am suggesting there is no evidence for it, therefore it must be at least be met with more skepticism than something with studies attached.
I'm pretty sure the concept of a "study" and "evidence" doesn't really apply to free will. There are arguments in favour of its existence though, and of course they are met with some skepticism, but it seems that more experts than not think that the arguments are good enough to overcome the skepticism.
> If it's not demonstrable in studies. It's of no use in coming up with solutions.
Is "If it's not demonstrable in studies. It's of no use in coming up with solutions." demonstrable in studies?
> Again, if free will exists (some extra component other than environment and physiology), if we cannot control it or even detect it, why even bring it up in debate?
What do you mean by "some extra component other than environment and physiology"? Is reasoning or desire an "extra component other than environment and physiology"? If not then free will, on some popular accounts, wouldn't be as well.
> In the same way, one should believe systemic racism exists before free will because one is more certain.
Maybe. Perhaps these "conservatives" have counterarguments and reasons to doubt the conclusions that are drawn from the data, that in their view make it less certain. I think you should take it up with one of them and ask for their arguments.
> Well, I don't know what free will implies. That's the point. As I've shown, the definition is circular, vague, and unproven.
All you've shown is that you haven't really researched the subject well beyond listening to Sam Harris. What free will implies depends on the account of free will your interlocutor accepts, and can be learned from the relevant literature like Frankfurt's Freedom of the will and the concept of a person or Fischer and Ravizza's Responsibility and Control. So again, you should take this up with the actual people you're addressing, because otherwise you're arguing against no one, and it's really no wonder that this abstract "Mr. Nobody" has vague beliefs.
A lot of scientists and indeed certain philosophers (or, at the least, people who have received a philosophical education) seem to consider determinism to be a settled question. However, there is some empirical work that seems to perhaps allow for indeterminism in the brain, and while the specifics are not fresh in my mind, Robert Kane's work makes use of some of this science. I'd recommend A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will to get you started, wherein he presents some of this science.
Many scientists are hard determinists because they take incompatibilism for granted. You are at least aware of compatibilism, so you don't seem to be doing this. As far as for what compatibilists say, it varies with the compatibilist, but the common thesis is that determinism doesn't threaten moral responsibility. Some of the more popular compatibilists are PF Strawson (Freedom and Resentment), Harry Frankfurt (Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility and Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person), and John Fischer & Mark Ravizza, who wrote Responsibility and Control, a very influential text that argues for semicompatibilism, the thesis that determinism doesn't threaten moral responsibility even if it does threaten free will.
Science cannot falsify compatibilism, and free will is completely plausible with what we know today.