Do you believe in free will?

[Whateverist]

But don't you see, you will either cool down or not and agree on the usage of terms or not, exactly as your enviro-/experiential/DNA dictates. There is no need and no possibility of deciding differently. If you'd been born with all the factors that have gone into determining Genkaus' perspective, then you'd have no choice but to argue his side. If you're right about determinism then you can't win. Reasoning is futile. Those thoughts which confirm or undermine your position are just more 'givens'. If you have no free will, you have no reason to give more credence to your thoughts than to Genkaus'. If you can see through the illusion of your apparent free will then why stop there? Why accept the thoughts and opinions that are given to you to think? Why suppose that what seems reasonable or rational to you is any more reliable than the illusion of your free will? In short, if you don't have free will, can you possibly have 'free thought'?

You are talking about the understanding of determinism as a self-refuting idea, which does not stand in face of a compatibilist view.

Yes. Sorry, I should have made it plainer that this was directed to FaithNoMore who seems still to be arguing for hard determinism. My point to him remains that freedom of thought makes no sense without free will. Who is deciding what to think? Who decides what makes sense or is reasonable?

If Libet's delay is supposed to cast doubt on who is the author of our actions, doesn't it even more profoundly cast doubt upon who is the author of our thoughts? A better understanding of Libet is simply that what gets measured before a person acts or decides how to act is simply the effort of squelching immediate response. In the delay the agent has time to factor in the effects of new learning. This factoring in may well happen on an unconscious level. After all, something of this kind would have been going on long before we developed the capacity for language, or does anyone think language predates self awareness?