If free will was not real

[The Grand Nudger]

I think I can sum it up:

The experience of making a decision.

What we have that people with frontal lobe damage don't have.

Decision made by a mentally healthy agent free from coercion/duress.

Neural process unfolding in the frontal lobes.

I wouldn't say that my requirements haven't alter, but I have refined them in light of your input, and that's to your credit. I really am not meaning to shift goalposts--just to get better at making my case for compatibilism.

The existence of the experience is not informative as regards any freedom.  A ll other things being equal...we would experience decision making even if it were not free..and we do experience decision making regardless of whether or not it is free.

What we have that people with frontal lobe damage don;t have is an undamagd frontal lobe.  Again, a human will, but what is free about it, by reference to that?

Your e are filled with coercion/duress/compulsion -even when "mentally healthy" - at a fundamental level this is how we conceptualize the brains very -operation-.  It has to respond a particular way to chemical x y or z..and this is -why- chemical x y or z is useful for creating brain function.  If it could go any old way, it's hard to see how it might work.  It;s not just the addicts, the junkies, the ill, or the disordered that have to toil under this burden.

Hey now...that's my ass you're holding a chunk of...bring it up 6 inches.   

You're quite right that it's not an reference to causal freedom, because I don't believe we have that kind of freedom. I'm noting that the kind of causal process that mentally healthy humans engage in is qualitatively different from that of a thermostat. Whether thermostats are causally constrained or not is irrelevant. They don't have a will, so a fortiori they don't have free will, compatibilist or otherwise.

You're asserting that they are...and by reference to -quantitative, not qualitative, objections.  The nest thermostat makes decisions, free from duress or coercion in every way that you have described yourself as being free from duress or coercion (and importantly, in many ways that you cannot even remotely lay claim to).  Why does it not have a will...and are you sure that your own will isn't qualitatively (rather than quantitatively) similar to what the nest thermostat is doing....because that's a current working hypothesis of mind...btw.  

I'm actually just noting that the irresistable urge of the heroin addict is, per the dictionary definition, not duress, but compulsion.

The urge is ultimately produced by neural peptides and synaptic impulse..which themselves exert a force and indeed are..so far as we can tell...your -actual- decisions...and do so even in the case of a healthy or "normal" brain.  

As it pertains to my argument, the causal processes that constitute my will do not in any way compel or force my will, in the way that a coercive agent or an extreme physical addiction does. My point is that "causally determined" is not synonymous with duress, coercion, or force.

Except that they do.  It's your own process that's being subverted in addiction.  The substance itself isn't creating anything qualitatively new or novel in you, it's the manner in which you normally operate that provides the very pathway for how addiction plays out.  Your "non-addictions" are running those same processes.  They are compelling you, forcing your will..in exactly the same -way-...just to a disparate effect.  You seek out happiness and cake for the same reasons and in the same way that the addict seeks out heroin.  In his case, you probably consider that an abrogation of free will as you define it...but in your case...you don;t.  You aren't describing a free will..even in your own context, your describing a will that is seeking out a substance other than heroin and is percieved, by you, to be "normal".  A normal will.  

Then don't we need a vocabulary to use when we do what we do based on the legal definition of autonomy? What's wrong with the vocabulary already in place?

Other than the nagging suspicion and, indeed, mounting body of evidence that it is based on folklore...which we then reference to -execute- people pursuant to...gee, idk, you tell me.  

I, for one, would like to live in a world where...should I find myself in front of a firing squad...the charges read won't amount to being convicted of witchcraft.