This topic has been buzzing around my mind for a while, so I figure it's time to externalize it. "Free will is an illusion" is a meme that I've seen quite a lot on this site especially. I don't think most people who repeat it have thought much about it.
Yeah, materialism (which I hear is popular around here) suggests a mechanistic universe, one without true randomness, defined solely by predictable input and output. That contradicts our intuition about independent free will, which seems unpredictable (or at least not fully predictable) when we experience it. I don't think a fully mechanistic universe is incompatible with free will, though - in fact, I think that any coherent definition of free will must necessarily exist even under a materialist lens. Those of you who are (like me) pop-philosophy dilettantes probably know that this position is called "compatibilism".
Obviously, though, people disagree. I want to know why. If you don't believe that free will exists, under what circumstances do you think it would exist? What do you think would change if it did exist according to your definition?
No one. Experience doesn't happen to a watcher, it just exists.
Stuff happens which causes experience, but experience, the qualia itself, isn't observed. It's observation itself
If no one is experiencing, where does experience come from? If no one is observing, how can observation exist? This is just kicking the can down the road.
I think you're internally defining a "self" in a more restrictive way than I am. It's entirely plausible that consciousness is made up only of observation. That still means that consciousness exists.
Yeah consciousness definitely exists, and what we mean by "consciousness" points to what we mean by "seeing" or "experience" or "thinking"
There's no division between these