@ orthonormal

you said- I agree. But I think that there is actually some feature of the (deterministic) act of choosing which leads a person to falsely believe that their choice is nondeterministic, and that by analyzing this we learn something interesting and important about cognition.

Very true. so what do you make of reconciling the two? Do we castigate them both in hopes of finding something out that is hiding in the shadows? The nexus of the matter is "belief" and in order to have a sound belief one should know as many facts about the subject as possible. I listened to a long discourse given by Dennet who is a avid compatibilist, he presented an extremely weak argument with nothing to back up his claims, now when i read "the illusion of free will" by wegner its nothing but proof.

Now of course we can poke holes all day in theories derived from test studies. But by what else can we as humans deduct solid reasoning if we don't take what evidence is available to us. To me discussing this topic is not about fascination, its about getting the truth. I might be that crazy to think it's available.