If free will was not real

[The Grand Nudger]

It's not, it just sounds shitty when I phrase it that way, and so you don't like it.  

It's a structurally different position. Bob can coerce me, but I cannot coerce myself.

Heroin, cake...either of these two things (and a mountain of others) would like to have a talk with you regarding that assertion.  You might, mistakenly, think that this is not a normal function..or that if you aren't addicted to heroin..you aren't under the same coercion - which does...point of fact, arise from your own locality, your own identity.  These aren;t abberations of the -process-...they are the normal functions of the process subjected to abhorrent substances.  

I mean cmon...cake is a terrible drug....look at those obesity rates!  

Here's just one reason why it doesn't invalidate our understanding of the role the frontal lobes play in impulse control and decision making--the guy had so little brain that he had almost no impulses to control. He had an IQ of 75 and wasn't functioning at a very high level.

So, you think that maybe...he didn't have free will...as you describe it? Probably not, right (as in you probably don't think that)?  Here again we see a quantitative distinction rather than a qualitative distinction.  His brain was damaged and so he had less of, but not none of, whatever that x is.  Regardless, we cannot even demonstrate the accuracy of that -quantitative- distinction, can we, we just sweep it under the rug. Yes, we know that he had a low iq, that he was not a "highly functioning" person, but did he have free will, and do you need a big frontal lobe to possess it, in any measure, if he had it? I;m, not invalidating our undrstanding of the role the frontal lobe plays, I;m invalidating your use of the frontal lobe as a goal post shifting requirement for free will when your previous criteria didn't -fail- per se...but led to a conclusion that you did not like...that a thermostat has your description of free will just as surely as we do.

As I said, a frontal lobe may be a requirement for a human will (or maybe not - by the example we discussed) but we're not talking about a human will...we're talking about a free will.

Remember, I'm using "duress" to mean acts or threat of violence by an agent, such as would considered a violation of a person's autonomy in a court of law. That's how I'm defining free will. What a mentally healthy person with legal autonomy has. You acknowledge free will in the social and legal context is coherent and compatible with determinism, you just insist that "free will" should mean something different.

If the impetus for your using the term in such a way is merely to make the assertions work, then it;s a poor reason to use the term in such a way.  Is heroin addiction not duress?  Can you maintain your convenient use of the term..with a straight face, in response to -that- question.  Because if you can;t...that;s probably a hint that something has gone awry in your propositional structure and use of terms.  

In the sense in which you acknowledge it's free, yes. But not in the sense in which we both believe it isn't free.

I don;t acknowledge it;s freedom, in any sense, or in any situation you have heretofore described.  If I did, we wouldn;t be having this wonderful disagreement. I don't think we possess even what -you- describe as free will.
-or did I misread that?