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hat would it be like to not have free will? We could imagine two scenarios: in the first, it is obvious that we don't have free will. Here, we would think things, and decide to do things, and they simply wouldn't happen. We would see ourselves doing completely other things; our decision-making process would be very clearly independent of our actions, and we would essentially be "along for the ride", like a roller coaster, which will do its own thing regardless of what we think about it.
In a different scenario, we would not have free will, but would be blind to this reality; we would think that our thinking and decision-making was causally related to the actions that we take, but this would all be deception, maybe even self-deception.
The first scenario is clearly not the case, and does not accord with our experiences. But what can we say about the second?
On my account, free will is basically responsiveness to reasons, understood as such. To be unresponsive to reason would mean something like the following: I am deciding whether to go to a particular party. In my head, I am weighing the costs and benefits of going to the party, and developing reasons to make a decision. Before I make the decision, I am sensitive to new reasons coming to light, to happening to spend more time dwelling on particular reasons, to having reasons occur to me that I hadn't previously thought of, etc. All of these events are relevant to my decision-making process.
My friend is also considering whether to go to the party. However, the government has implanted a mind-control chip in my friend's brain, which will cause him to go to the party no matter what. He will believe that he is reasoning his way to his decision, but in fact it is all post-hoc reasoning. His decision was set beforehand, and any mental activities that happen afterward are irrelevant to what he will end up doing. Even if the party host calls him to tell him not to come, or he finds out that his worst enemy is planning to prank him at the party, or he hears that there's a terrible blizzard running through town, he will still figure out a reason to go to the party, because the government wants him there (likely to assassinate a target), and their mind control device is eminently powerful.
This is what it would mean to not have free will -- to be unresponsive to reason in how you make decisions. And it is a very tall order to claim that all of our actions are unresponsive to reason. It is certainly true, and has been known for a very long time, that we deceive ourselves about our motivations sometimes, and that we can be manipulated by others. But to claim that this is the rule, rather than the exception, I would argue is virtually impossible to prove, and almost certainly not the case. At any rate, the onus of proof is clearly on the skeptics, and I've been unimpressed with their work to date on the matter.