What is talking past each other?

Imagine two people walking on a path through an unfamiliar forest discussing how they might cross a river up ahead. "Perhaps at the riverbank, there will be a ferry that can take us across the river," the first person says. "A fairy?" asks the second person incredulously. "What are you talking about? Fairies don't even exist!" Startled, the first person replies, "What are you talking about? There might not be a ferry where this path meets the river, but I am sure that there are ferries somewhere along the river."

When people think that they are talking about the same thing but are actually talking about different things, this is a form of "talking past each other" (see Glaser, 2012). This is known as the "jingle fallacy" in psychological assessment (Block, 1996). In this post, I examine how biologists Kevin Mitchell (2023) and Robert Sapolsky (2023) talk past each other about the existence of free will. (You can review my previous description of their disagreement here, and watch them debate the existence of free will in this YouTube video.)

In their books, both Mitchell and Sapolsky seem reluctant to begin with a clear and explicit definition of free will. Mitchell (2023, p. 278): "I purposely did not start with a preconceived notion of what properties our will must have to qualify as 'free,' for this purpose or any other." Sapolsky (2023, p. 14): "What is free will? Groan ... I'll do my best to mitigate the drag of this." [See also Fischer's (2023) analysis of Sapolsky's reluctance to define free will straightforwardly.]

Refusing to define what you are talking about is a recipe for talking past each other. An examination of the debate and their books shows that Mitchell may have argued about the existence of ferries, while Sapolosky may have argued about the nonexistence of fairies.

After reviewing the evolution of life from single-celled organisms to human beings, Mitchell (2023) eventually arrives at a definition of free will as "conscious, rational control" (p. 20).........

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