To me, this is the crux of the argument, because arguing whether we become dehumanised if we are machines, is utterly subjective and slippery.
David
I'm not sure I agree with this. For example, we have the following research papers:
The Value of Believing in Free Will, Vohls and Schooler, 2008.
Prosocial Benefits of Feeling Free: Disbelief in Free Will Increases Aggression and Reduces Helpfulness, Baumeister, Masicampo, and DeWall, 2011.
Free Will and Punishment: A Mechanistic View of Human Nature Reduces Retribution, Shariff, et al, 2014.
In the first two series of studies, it is interesting to note that with three groups, anti-free will, pro-free will, and control, the only one that differed in behavior was the
anti-free will group, indicating that most people already believe in free will. It is rather disturbing to see that very short exposure to anti-free will statements can manipulate behavior of groups in a negative way (one method used was statements from Crick's Astonishing Hypothesis, another was taking a neuroscience class), resulting in greater anti-social behavior. People do seem to base their moral decisions on philosophical worldviews, at least in part, either consciously or unconsciously.
Baumeister, et al. (2011) states that:
Thus, disbelief in free will serves as a cue to act on impulse, a style of response that promotes selfish and impulsive actions such as aggressing and refusing to help. Some philosophical analyses may conclude that a fatalistic determinism is compatible with highly ethical behavior, but the present results suggest that many laypersons do not yet appreciate that possibility. (pg 267)
Perhaps many scientists, psychologists, philosophers, and academics would say that laypersons are just too unintelligent to understand that they should be happy to be automata, but the data is pretty clear that this is not the case; it is part of a category of mechanistic dehumanization, robbing us of our unique human characteristics, since significant exercise of free will appears to be absent in other animals.
Even more subtle is effect on children, because Mueller and Dweck (Intelligence Praise can Undermine Motivation and Performance, 1998) found that attributing success to an inborn trait (intelligence) rather than the child's effort actually reduced effort and enjoyment. This may not seem directly related to free will, but it seems to support the idea that the more we attribute to inherited or biological causes, the less beneficial the behavior. This is also seen within medicine, since Lebowitz and Ahn (Effects of Biological Explanations for Mental Disorders on Clinicians' Empathy, 2014) found that:
Biological explanations have been thought to make patients appear less accountable for their disorders, which could increase clinicians' empathy. To the contrary, biological explanations evoked significantly less empathy. These results are consistent with other research and theory that has suggested that biological accounts of psychopathology can exacerbate perceptions of patients as abnormal, distinct from the rest of the population, meriting social exclusion, and even less than fully human. (Abstract, emphasis added)
Miller (Science and the Courts. In Mock Case, Biological Evidence Reduces Sentences, 2012) also found that biological explanations reduce sentences of criminals, and Rai and Holyoak (Exposure to Moral Relativism Compromises Moral behavior, 2013) found that exposure to moral relativism compromises moral behavior. Again, moral relativism may not be directly related to free will, but it is almost implicit in a belief in a lack of free will, since morality is only a relative social construct with no absolute truth, and your morals are only the result of the culture you happen to find yourself in since there is no free choice in the matter. This does seem related because of the previous study of Shariff, et al. found a similar effect on reduced sentences with exposure to anti-free will statements. Some people, like the author of the article in the original post, seem to think this is a good thing, but it appears to be an overall degradation of societal behavior.
Considering that anti-free will beliefs encourage cheating and stealing, this has grave economic implications, since the US is already burdened with over a trillion dollars a year in theft and fraud. Corporations also like anti-free will beliefs since this encourages impulsive behavior and drives consumerism. Pharmaceutical companies like biological explanations of psychopathology since Lebowitz and Ahn (2014) found that "biological explanations yielded significantly higher medication effectiveness ratings than did psychosocial explanations." What sort of effects do all of these have together? What does this add up to? Decreases in pro-social behavior, increased consumerism, increased medicating, reduced empathy in the medical system, and reduced sentencing of criminals. All of this can be driven by mechanistic dehumanization, which apparently we are told we should be happy about! I rather think that because of all this, ignorant proclamations against free will by academia is morally reprehensible and contributing to social decline.