If free will was not real

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

It's not the movement were discussing, when we discuss free will - that's just one possible effect that puts it into a context.  We're wondering whether the will is free, are we not?  If we're not..then why are we discussing -free will-?

"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.

It may not matter to your experience (I did just describe one way that this experience might be manufactured in absentia) but it does matter with regards to the -accuracy- of that experience....because what you just described is the opposite of "unfettered", or free...even if it is a will.  

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.

I'm not demanding that you be free from your personhood, lol....I'm suggesting that the thing you call free will ought to be....free.  Yes, you can form an intent - is however you do that free?  If your definition of free will doesn;t demand that this be free....maybe you should use a different word for it, like will, or intent, or nature...or any of the other words you -have- used for it? The addition of the word free is unhelpful and non-descriptive.

I doubt, in any case, that you'd be able to demonstrate that you have this ability you choose to call free will, regardless of whether or not your will is free. Our lives are full of obstructions or compulsions outside of ourselves. That something happens "in your head" as it were, does not suggest or imply anything about how it came to be in your head. This arbitrary line of terminus is self serving and uninformative, it stands only to assume that what you call free is free, even when your description of it is not. If you're arguing over your definitions, rather than any actual freedom of will....then I'd say I have no reason to think that they are accurate even on their terms, and plenty of reason to think otherwise.