The Folk and Limited Free Will

I suspect Manuel, Eddy, and other like-minded revisionists and compatibilists will be comfortable with this folk "degrees of freedom" description of the contemporary problem of free will (especially as it relates to science) despite some of the confusions contained therein .  For instance, even if we didn't have free will and hence weren't morally responsible in the robust sense, it wouldn't follow that criminals shouldn't be accountable at all.  How and why we treat criminals would of course change, but that we do something rather than nothing would not change.  Setting that aside, I nevertheless find the post illustrative.  I am curious to see what the Gardeners think...

Here are two BBC articles that lend support to the "circumscribed yet free in the face of science" line of reasoning.  The first is about child abuse and suicide, the second is about child abuse and alcoholism.  In both cases, the evitability of the outcome is stressed in the end despite the genetic and neuro-cognitive changes that are said to occur as the result of abuse.  I take it the skeptics in the crowd will focus on the stark changes that abuse can cause whereas the free willers (and likely the folk--such as the author of the aforementioned post) will focus on the openness of the end result.  But that is a story for another day...