If free will was not real

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh we are talking about a property of human beings. Mah frontal lobes. And so on and so forth. That's why we can prosecute people. Because they have fully functioning frontal lobes. Lots of people with frontal lobe damage are incarcerated, and don't deserve to be.

No, it's not -why- we can prosecute people..and we're flirting with an appeal to consequence if you think that we couldn't, if we didn't have free will, or didn't accept the folklore surrounding free will...which is something we've discussed more than once in this thread.   Your frontal lobes -may- grant you the property of a human will (even this is a stretch), but we're looking for a -free- will, which we've also discussed.

My argument for legal pragmatism doesn't exclude compatibilism qua compatibilism. See everything I've said about the will being free so long as it is free from duress/coercion. That's generic compatibilism.

It;s just not an argument -for free will-.  Nor is the lack of duress or coercion generic compatibilism..because we plainly understand..even if you won;t accept..that there is no time in which our will is free of either of those things. That no sensible and evidenced description of will can divorce itself -from- them.  Compatibilism is the notion that a "free will": is somehow -compatible- with all the forms of duress, coercion, and compulsion we accept to be present and, perhaps, part of the fundamental state of affairs in the universe, such as hard determinism. That in some sense, even with all of that, we have such a will...not that those factors are not present or relevant or applicable. This has always been the criticism of a compatibilist free will, that it;s a way of -saying- that you freely chose the output of your deterministic will, a non-cognitive sentence if one has even a rudimentary grasp of either the concept of freedom, or determinism. This criticism isn't even lost on prominent compatibilists, they understand the problems of proposing such a thing, the difficulties in establishing it, and the contradictions in terms pursuant to any description of it. "Free" enough, for them...whatever that means anyway, but in no way qualitatively free.

It meets all of the criteria I suggested for freedom, but none of the criteria I suggested for will.

Firstly, your criteria have been troubled* for a variety of reasons we've discussed at length...secondly, you don't know that -at all-.  You don't even know if -I- meet your criteria for a will, or a free will.  This is simply an argument from convenience.  Nevertheless....if it meets your criteria for freedom..than the sort of -freedom- a thermostat has is the sort of -freedom- our will has, regardless of whether or not the thermostat has a will. Is it not? Again, that seems like a trivial linguistic flourish. Are we, to use your lead example above...prosecuting people on the basis that their will is as -free- as a thermostats non-will..or do we take the term free will to mean something other than that, more than that? Do we use it to refer to a type of -"freedom"- that the thermostat -doesn't- have? As you've pointed out..if we think a person has a will about as free as a thermostat, we consider them unfit for trial - not sufficiently accountable for their actions. We're obviously referring to some other quality "x"....even if it doesn't exist.

(sorry, my tv went out on me yesterday mid-response, had to get a new one)