If free will was not real

[bennyboy]

You have a more a compatibilist view of free will..I imagine.  I don't think that the term makes sense at all.  Being willing to -call- black blue, and black -being- blue are two different things.  If the process by which you form intent is not free....I'd simply say that your will is not free.  Not that you didn't have a will, or intent.

We are arguing about different things, I think. My definitions are what I'm arguing about.

"Will" I define as the capacity to manifest intent as a behavior. I don't really "move" my arm as an agent. . . I will it to move and it moves, even though I know very little about the actual mechanism and functions underlying that movement.

"Free will" I define as the capacity of a person to form intent, and manifest it as behavior, based on one's personhood. I'm the kinda guy who likes chocolate ice cream, I go to the store, I pick out my chocolate ice cream-- and nobody and nothing external to my personhood is either making me or preventing me. Whether my personhood is the deterministic product of myriad physical and electrochemical interactions doesn't really matter much to my experience of making unfettered choices based on my personhood.

The process by which I form intent is a pure expression of my personhood. You seem to be demanding that I be free even from that-- that I should be able to "will" myself to like strawberry, when obviously chocolate is so much better. But that doesn't make sense, at least to me. But there's nothing wrong with saying, in a causal sense, that you do X or Y because it's in your nature. The freedom comes AFTER that fact-- that I can form an intent to do X, and manifest that intent in the real world, without obstruction or compulsion from outside myself.