If free will was not real

[The Grand Nudger]

An autonomous decision is, by definition, uncoerced.

Not in-context...and since you're merely attempting to establish free-in-contetext, rather than actually or meaningfully free..it's a dilemma that you've invited.

It's just defined as a decision that a rational agent made in the absence of violent threats or actions from by another agent. My claim that these terms don't apply to causally determined neural processes is quite literally true.

That's not -all- it's defined as, is it?  Come now, don't act like I'm crazy here.  

One thing we agree about is that properties of a system can differ from the properties of its components. Yes, the system that is our decision-making process is not the result of decisions that we made. But this is true whether you're a compatibilist or an incompatibilist.

-and cuts to the heart of the claim to ownership that you are -using- as a claim to freedom.  

Going back several pages, I defined free will as "the experience of making choices." Nest thermostats don't have that, either.

So you say, but by the criteria for free will that you've offered, they do.  Their decisions are made in the absence of duress, as you apply it, from exterior agents, as you apply it.  

But I probably would have made my case better if I'd defined free will in terms of the frontal lobes (which is just the physical correlate of our experience of making decisions).

Which wouldn't help, since I both know and can demonstrate my ability to make my will "your" will..despite the existence of your frontal lobe..and in fact -because- of it's existence....even in those extreme cases where my will, is that you kill someone for me.  

High level indeterminacy? Even supposing that obtained, wouldn't that just introduce randomness into the process?

In-determinate =/= random.  A conscious and self originating decision might be in-determinate, in context, but that in no way establishes that it is random.  

It doesn't happen in me. It is me.

Unfortunately for that proposition (which I agree with) what you are is in no way "free", so far as we can tell..regardless of whether or not it " is you".  

Correct, you're not presenting metaphysical objections. I know you wouldn't go there! That's why I assumed at the outset that you were a determinist. I think you're position is more interesting than the substance-dualists, I just don't think we have any physical evidence to support it, and I don't think we can extrapolate from our experience of making decisions to physical/metaphysical models that explain the experience.

We don't have any evidence to support it?  You mean, like the fact that all evidence we have points to hard determinism with no exceptions, anywhere, anytime we look at anything?  

Now as for Bob--Bob is an agent who is not me, whereas the internal processes that constitute my decision-making mechanisms are me. Which is why it's coercion in the former, and not in the latter.

I can only repeat that I consider this a semantic switch rather than a meaningful distinction.  If you don;t think that your biology is capable of coercing you...then I don;t think there's any way that you and I could ever approach any sort of agreement on this subject.  If you think that your ownership of that biology makes it "not coercion" again..the same comment applies.  Go talk to an addict, see how they feel about that.  Then, maybe, realize that you are also an addict (if "you" literally -are- your brain and it's processes, as we both agree that you are)...even if heroin isn't your drug of choice....and "you" prefer chocolate cake.