If free will was not real

[The Grand Nudger]

(A) is my number one criticism of Daniel Dennett. Fully on board with you there. (B) sounds awfully close to a concession that the compatibilist position is correct.

B is not even remotely a concession that the compatibilist position is correct, but an acknowledgement that it -need not be- and still..precious little would need to be changed.  For example....if we don't have free will...we'd still (justifiably) put people in prisons, for the same reasons, to the same effect, and we don't even have to change the signs on the buildings.  We couldn't maintain moral desert, true, but it's irrelevant to the issue of incarceration - just as one example.    

This is equivalent to saying "My identity is simply that collection of attributes my collection of attributes owns." Once you being applying the concept of ownership to "A owns A," self-ownership, I think you've lost what makes the concept of ownership meaningful.

If the concept of ownership is not meaningful, simply for what it is..then how could it be meaningful in any more elaborate context - like the ownership of will, or possession of a free will?  How can you possibly maintain your argument for freedom-come-ownership if the meaningfulness of ownership is so fragile and tenuous in the first place?

Representing information, having experiences, previsioning courses of action...how are these processes not qualitatively different from what a nest thermostat does?

Because it -does- those things, by any sense of the words that aren;t completely self serving and question begging....and again..look at how elaborate your criteria have become when the previous criteria turn out to allow for a free will of a thermostat.  Perhaps this was my intention all along.  Is it me coercing you..putting you under duress, here, or your own mind?   

You know what, you're a scary guy. (In a good way )

In the way that only a smiling, goofy clown of a family man can be.  There are people out there in the world who think they're really scary, really intimidating......and then I opine on the value of their annihilation for the mere -convenience- it might bring to my children, in a -totally- wholesome and completely serious way.  

Point conceded. I think it would be cool if it were true, in fact.

I think it would be cool as shit too.  People shouldn't take my sustained resistance to the idea to mean that I'm not rooting for it. In my own way, I like to think that I help incubate it.  I'm trying to help us describe it in an airtight way, if/when we discover it.

What we're talking about is the cognitive capability that we have that people with frontal lobe damage don't. People with significant damage to both frontal lobes will do things like steal a car...and just drive it till it runs out of gas. Steal stuff they don't even want, just because they see it there...and then give it away. See a second story window open...and jump out. Environmental stimuli use them. They have no ability to resist acting on impulses.

I agree with you that we would be more free if some kind of incompatibilist free will turned out to be true, but in the meantime, what we have is far more than a triviality.

Again I'll point out that nowhere, before, was this lobe business present...but I can run with it anyway.  Ever hear about "the man with no brain" - apparently you don't actually need a frontal lobe, or at least a fully (or commensurately) present and similarly organized frontal lobe, to present the behaviors you consider to be indicative of free will.  That and, ofc...we could only be talking about a -human- will if we reference human biology...whether or not it's free is another question.

What we -have- is far more than a triviality...but is it free in a non-trivial sense? Just to resurect an example I led with...if we will, with our own wills...to commit a crime...we need to be isolatyed from the gp. If we -freely- will, to commit a crime..we need to be isolated from the gp. Regardless of whether or not someone else compelled us to commit said crime..we need to be isolated from the GP. If we did so of our own accord, it;s no more or less neceesarry to isolate us from the gp than it would be if we hadn't. Bob made you do it, your biology made you do it...it just doesn't matter...and is completely trivial by reference to that example...in addition to being no different, qualititively..as an effect of the same internal processes either way. Bob gives you input, you act on that input or don't. The extent to wich the input bob gives you is compelling is something you cannot fight against -internally-...and bobs input positively relies on your internal processes despite it's point of origin. Ultimately, you compell -yourself- based upon his input. It's not direct, and the extent to which you find -anything- compelling is not a metric which you have personally set or can claim robust ownership of.

If this is freedom, it's not qualitatively different from non-freedom...and so I just dispense with the term "free" that's causing all the issues...because even without it..we're obviously still describing the same thing. There's no need to use it, it adds nothing, and it makes no distinctions, which are not.....on their very face, superficial and non-distinct. The same thing is understood to be happening, at a fundamental level, whether bob pushes the needle on you, or whether you willingly push it into yourself. Either way you did it., you own those actions and those decisions - regardless of whether or not any freedom is involved in either.