How would not having free will feel to you?

Traditionally philosophical literature recognizes a distinction between fatalism and causal determinism. Causal determinists don't say that human actions and thoughts don't or can't affect the future, just that those actions and thoughts are themselves causally dependent on prior conditions and the laws of nature. Fatalism is generally defined as something like "no matter what you think or do the future cannot be altered. It's Oedipus killing his father despite doing everything he can to avoid it.

The psychological and physical answers above sound to me like what it would be like if fatalism were true than if hard determinism were true. I mean, hard determinists think we don't have free will; it would be odd if they thought not having free will involved novel psychological or physical experiences.

Anyway, I think the only kind of free will that makes sense is compatiblist free will. So when it comes to what it would be like not to have free will I'm concerned with what it would be like if my decisions weren't made according to my wishes and reasons.

I would expect to have a very hard time predicting my behavior or explaining it after the fact with any kind of rational model. If I did have reasons and preferences to back up my decisions they would probably be invented after the decision had been made. Post-facto rationalizations instead of genuine reflection about the decision. Also, I would probably feel like I had a lot of reasons and preferences that contradicted each other and would often find myself doing x even though I wanted to want to not do x.

Rest assured, I have never experienced any of that.

It's all about the physical components. Not having free will feels like sleep paralysis; it's a disconnection from your muscles.

Have you ever been playing an immersive video game, for example a story-driven FPS, and become completely used to looking around, moving etc. with the controls; and then hit a point where the developers take that control away to do something narrative? Suddenly your head turns to look at something and you didn't tell it to? The fraction of a second of vertigo and confusion, before you remember you're playing a game? That's no-free-will.

Feeling unable to complete thoughts I would like to think through, as if someone censored them

I can't make sense of this one. How would you even tell? You can't have an endless tower of meta-thoughts monitoring the first thought to see if it halted.

Your question seems ambiguous between these two:

• If we didn't have free will, what would it feel like?
• What sorts of feelings-like would give us the impression of not having free will?

Of course the answer to the first might turn out to be "exactly like we feel now, since in fact we don't have free will" or "exactly like we feel now, since having or not having free will, as such, makes no difference to what it's like to be us".

When I read Eleizer's posts on free will, and then spent time thinking it through myself, I came to the conclusion that the question was (non-obviously) incoherent, and that this is what Eleizer also thinks. More specifically, that when you Taboo free will you find yourself trying to say that your brain is not controlled by physics, rather "you" do, where "you" has to be not physics, which is really just "magic". I started thinking further about questions and realised that there are whole classes of questions for which neither "Yes" or "No" is the correct response. The most basic example is a contradiction. P = A is true & A is false.

"What would it feel if we actually had P?" "Uhh, hold on a second, that is nonsense." "I know we can't have P but what if we did! What would it feel like??"

I find this understanding incredibly valuable, because it is a traditional philosopher's downfall that they try to answer every question no matter what. You can fully explain the problem with the question yet still feel like there is a question. So the problem becomes psychological instead of philosophical and can be attacked by figuring out what our brain is doing when it tries to tackle the question.

Additionally, I think it is a Mind Projection Fallacy to ask a question like "What would infrared look/feel like if we could see it?" Stimuli don't necessitate particular perceptions. You could rewire your blue and red photoreceptors in order to feel blue, I mean, 420nm light, as red [untested]. I'm mildly confident that this can be extended to asking about how free/not free will would feel like. It's likely you can run with certain aspects of the idea without going loopy I still think the overall idea is wobbygobby.

Another mistake is thinking that being unpredictable gives you more free will. Either you are controlled by predictable atoms or controlled by unpredictable dice rolling mechanics, or what ever. Neither case gets you any closer to having "you" in charge. I even prefer being predictable rather than randomised. That shit's crazy.

Anyway, I expect I'm going to get a lot of disagreements stemming from us having different ideas about free will. Everyone struggles to formalise from the informal in different ways, so if you see something I've said as nonsense, ask yourself if it is just that we are using the same string of characters to point to different ideas.

The absence of free will seems like a pretty good description of how I've felt for the past 8 years or so. "And now, I'm going to do X. ... Right? Other half of brain that hears this part giving orders? X? Any day now? You realize that not listening to me means we'll have to put up with getting yelled at by people who will Fundamental Attribution Error us into oblivion, right?" Though maybe Fundamental Attribution Error isn't quite right, since there's a strange enduring "Not much decision-making power" quality rather than the "So you think you're better than everyone and just blowing everyone off and choosing to do other things?" qualities that I've been accused of.

This always reminds me of an incident from first grade, that probably isn't relevant to the discussion, so I'll probably post a summary elsewhere.

The trouble seems to be a matter of perspective. From an outside view, with all the relevant data, an intelligent agent should be able to predict the decisions of most humans under most conditions. We have such a phrase as "out of character" for when our models of people do not match their behavior. Out of character moments are considered a sign of poor writing in fiction, and something to fear in human society. When we fail to predict someone's actions correctly, we usually try to find out what was missing from our model and update accordingly (consider reactions to every mass shooting in America in the past 20 years).

I kinda feel like, by the time "free will" has been reduced to something logical, attaching the word "free" to it ceases to be meaningful. Free from overt coercion? I wouldn't even go that far; would we claim that a financially secure middle-class member of the local most-privelaged class has free will, whereas a prisoner of an abusive, manipulative overlord does not?

I find it interesting to think about how many of one's actions trace back to conscious decisions, and how many conscious decisions lead to the decided upon actions. Once college brought my inability to do what I want to the forefront, and I'd put up with people yelling nonsense about it for a few years while fumbling around in search of a solution, I wound up talking to some psychologists. One of them mentioned the emotions -> thoughts -> actions pyramid, with regards to what we can control. The general idea is that we have most control over our actions, and least over our emotions, and some over thoughts. Apparently this feels true enough for enough people that it translates into something resembling the idea of free will.

Maybe I'm drawing ridiculously large conclusions from one example, but if I had to put those three experiences into order of control, I'd say I have way more control over my thoughts than my actions. I might call it "freedom of thought" and not "freedom of choice", but "freedom of thought" is as much a misnomer as "free will". It's free because it feels like I'm doing it, not like that is the inevitable outcome of the particular arrangement of matter in my vacinity? Even though I'm often frustrated when there is a lot of noise coming from nearby, or loud conversations, etc, because it's hard not to let them influence my thoughts so as to continue thinking about what I initially wanted to think about?

Something tells me I've missed the point of all the other comments, here. :(

[edit]: Looking over the comments again, I feel like I've spent way too much time arguing about whether or not the concept of free will is meaningful. The more important part is that I've felt persistently like I am not in control of what I wind up doing for quite a while, and I can retrospectively identify similar moments from the past that I didn't think about in such terms at the time.

Some earlier related thoughts here, in lieu of actually thinking about your question in any detail, which I might do later.

Slightly off-topic, but I don't want to start another free-will thread...

Would free-will represent an evolutionary cost?

If free will is to say that your decisions are not driven solely by your stimuli inputs, then it seems to me that a creature with free-will is by definition less responsive to its environment than a creature without it. A creature that is less responsive to its environment should be out-competed by a creature that is more responsive to its environment ceteris parisbus.

Even assuming that free-will is possible, is it likely, or would we expect "free-will" genes to get eliminated from the gene pool?

Hmmm...

I suppose if I had the feeling that I could predict my own actions with certainty - as though I were able to compute my own input-output table - that would be like feeling like I didn't have free will.

I don't like introspecting, in general. It consistently makes me feel bad; my train of thought inevitably turns to the things about me that make me upset. Better to stay distracted and keep my mind on more pleasant things.

Perhaps we should also ask "Why do we feel we have free will?". The simplest answer, of course, is that we actually do. Albeit, it wouldn't be beyond the scope of human biases to believe that we do if we don't. Ultimately, if we were certain that we couldn't feel more like we have free will than we already do, then we could reduce the question "Do we have free will?" to "Would someone without free will feel any differently than we do?".

I really can't imagine any subjective difference between having free will and not having free will. For example, "Observing myself act in ways I never intended to act" seems to be the conception we have of free will from video games/movies/etc. (e.g. in Dragon's Dogma, your pawns can get possessed by a dragon and then they run towards you trying to kill you while telling you that they're not in control of themselves) but I don't think we should generalize from fictional evidence.

"what would it feel like to have/not have free will?"

I imagine the stereotypical idea of hypnosis: the subject finds themselves unable to resist the suggestions implanted by the hypnotist.

I do not know if this phenomenon actually exists.

I suspect that a quick summary of people's viewpoints on free will itself would help in interpreting at least some answers. In my case, I believe that we don't have "free will" in the naive sense that our intuitions tend to imply (the concept is incoherent). However, I do believe that we fell like we have free will for specific reasons, such that I can identify some situations that would make me feel as though I didn't have it. So, not actually having free will doesn't constrain experience, but feeling like I don't does.

Epistemically:

If I discovered that I was unpredictable even in principle; if randomness played a large role in my thought process, and I sometimes gave different outputs for the same inputs, then I would feel like I did not have free will.

Psychologically:

I have no consistent internal narrative to my actions. On reflection I discover that I could not predict my actions in advance, and merely rationalized them later. I notice that my actions do not tend to fulfill my preferences (this one happens in real life to varying degrees). I notice that I act in ways that go against what I wanted at the time.

Physically:

None. I am tempted to say that losing complete control of my body constitutes a loss of free will, but in reality it seems to closer reflect simply that my will cannot be executed, not that I don't have it (or feel like I have it).

Note: much of this is also heavily tied into my identity. It would be interesting to examine how interlinked the feelings of identity and free will really are.

Epistemic:
-> finding out that I can't, even given an exponentially bigger universe to compute in, be predicted.
It would also potentially destroy my sense of identity. Even if I can be predicted, I can do anything I want: it's just that what I'll want is constrained. However, if the converse is true, any want I feel has nothing to do with me (and my intuitive sense of identity is similar to 'something that generates the wants and thoughts that I have') and I'm not sure I'll feel particularly obliged to satisfy them.
(Warning: writing it out made it sound to me like post-hoc rationalisation. But far as I can make out, I believe it.)

-> finding out that I'm being controlled by direct neurological tinkering or very thorough manipulation.
Manipulation to some degree is very common, and the line between influence and manipulation is not very clean, but there is definitely an amount of manipulation that will make me go, 'no free will.' Basically, if you can make it clear that my wants are being constrained by intentions.

Psychological and physical: I find it hard to come up with anything that won't look normal. If my wants are being constrained, it'll just feel like stronger wants acting contrariwise. However, I can imagine something ineffable keeping me away from certain thoughts and wants... but that happens anyway too - Yudkowsky's written shitloads about that feeling (also, in a very different context, me).
Physically, involuntary motions happen all the time, and often I can't move quite the way I want to. Physical constraints, I dismiss them as.

Well, since I suspect I don't have free will, I imagine not having free will would feel a great deal like how I feel right at this moment.

Knowing that someone out there already predicts my behavior perfectly

The halting problem shows that perfect prediction is impossible if you don't simulate the whole system. On the other hand there are plenty of cases where pretty good prediction is possible.

Observing myself act in ways I never intended to act, whether beneficial to me or not

When it comes to acting in way you don't intend to do, flirting is a good example. I remember an experience I was sitting next to a beautiful girl in a lecture.

We had good "chemistry". One time I look at her breast and she immidiately touched my arm and then automatically said "sorry". She had no conscious knowledge of the fact that she touched me in response to looking at her breast, so she excused her behavior.

I also caught myself one time touching her and immidiately excusing myself where I didn't consciously intend to touch her.

I don't think that such actions we take outside of our conscious awareness mean that we don't have free will.

Observing my arms/legs/mouth move as if externally controlled, and being unable to interfere

If you cut my nerves that control my arm and put in electrones to control my arm I don't think that would mean that I lack free will.

When it comes to psychological control, part of free will is the ability to give up control over your arm. I get more annoyed by my personal inability to give up some forms control as I would see that as given up free will.

When I try to imagine what it would be like to feel a specific absence of free will, the main difference is that I would do things without a need to exert "willpower," and with less internal monologue/debate.

Infants appear to have a mental life that is significantly different from children or adults. They may not have what a child or an adult would call free will, but they lack the means to tell us and they forget what it was like as they become children and adults.

Infants, children and adults who are asleep appear to have a mental life that is significantly different from that when they are awake. People who are asleep may not have what a person who is awake would call free will, but people who are asleep lack the means to tell us and they forget what it was like as they wake up. People who sleep uncontrollably (due to narcolepsy, being drugged or for other reasons) might have even less free will during that time.

People who take drugs inducing psychosis, again, appear to have a mental life that might not be what a straight person would call free will. Some mental illnesses involving compulsion, same thing. And again, people on drugs or with mental illnesses may not be able to convey to others what it feels like.

People with brain damage or especially low IQ - same.

So in each of these cases, experiencing a lack of free will includes the inability to convey what it is like. Thus, it would feel like not being able convey what it is like. Which I'd guess might be frustrating or sad.

Here is one from reddit, tangentially related:

Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, "I'd like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream." The waitress replies, "I'm sorry, Monsieur, but we're out of cream. How about with no milk?"

Is there a standard definition of "free will" that everyone is assuming, and for some reason I don't know? If so could someone please point to or summarize it?

I confess that the more I try to think about this and related questions, the more I find myself confused. At this point I'm not even sure what the question is. "How would not having free will feel to you?" is a grammatically correct English sentence; but it seems no more meaningful to me than a sentence such as "How would not having open feet feel to you?"

That is, I am not sure what we are even talking about here. What is the difference between free will and will?

Free will is subtler than most of the suggested points in the post would suggest.

Randomness. If we can act randomly, that hardly proves or even suggests free will. My determinism could be probabilistic, resulting in things like "in this case I will take action A 20% of the time and action B 80% of the time." It is easy enough to implement something like this in simple computer code, although the objection might be made that it is a pseudorandom number generator we use to roll the dice. However, a random number generator based on measuring the voltage to picovolt accuracy across a room temperature resistor can be made, in this case it is the brownian motion of a bunch of electrons interacting with all sorts of other things around the resistor that produces the random number. This is of the same order of "true" randomness as actually rolling a fair dice would be.

Predictability. Even something which is completely deterministic may require a full detail "simulation" to predict fully. I believe this is the point of bringing up the halting problem in other posts. And the predictor would need to simulate a large chunk of the entire universe including all the 10^23! degrees of freedom of whatever random number generator we might be using to generate probabilistic answers.

The feeling that "I" am controlled by forces or consciousnesses outside of "me" wouldn't prove a lack of free will. My "chooser" might not be completely 1:1 and onto with my "consciousness." Then there would be things that surprised "me" and felt out of "my" control even though the locus of agency was completely within me.

For a long time I believed, very strongly, that I had free will. I thought, why would I even discuss the issue with someone who didn't think they had free will, after all, they were just arguing with me because they had to, not out of a choice about belief.

Now I don't think I have free will. Randomness doesn't make free will. Quantum uncertainty isn't a guarantee of free will by any means, just a guarantee of a kind of randomness that might be particularly difficult or even impossible to predict. Our only hope for "free will" is a fleeting one, that there is "physics" of consciousness in which the particles are conscious and the rules of interaction are called will. Turning the magic into physics, and making me wonder why we would call rule-described interactions in this new physical sphere any free-er than are newton's laws of billard balls in the presence of thermal noise.

Knowing that I am in a simulation

How would you rephrase that if we taboo simulation?

Your comments seem like they answer a slightly different question: "What would it feel for a person who has free will to not have free will?". The right question is, "What would it feel for a person who doesn't have free will to not have free will?". (brushing all concerns about what 'free will' is under the carpet for now)

Another question that occurred to me is, "Should we try to feel as if we don't have free will?" It seems like people would behave differently if they felt as if they didn't have free will; they would act less responsibly. So even if it is true that we do not have free will, might it not be better for philosophers to convince people that we do?

On Monday, I have free will.
On Tuesday, I don't have free will.
I feel better on Tuesday, because I choose to get up very early on Monday to go to work and on Tuesday I have to sleep in.

I discount any effect by which someone else seems to control me as dissonance or terror; I define "me" to be the entity which controls me, which need not be the same as the entity which I might think perceives that control. (Terror comes from the thought that I might end up concluding that I am just a perception and cognition engine, without the interaction engine to alter or explore the world independently... or rather, that "I" am not such a thing, but that the perception and cognition isn't actually "me", and that terrifies it. I have the strangest waking nightmares.)

Not having free will feels exactly like how everything feels like right now. Having free will is not well-defined enough to feel like anything.