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?
You are correct about the free-will-belief and responsibility connection:
...Prior to taking the math test, half the group (15 participants) were asked to read the following passage from Francis Crick’s book The Astonishing Hypothesis (Scribner):
‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons … although we appear to have free will, in fact, ou
Given the spike in free-will debates on LW recently (blame Scott Aaronson), and the usual potentially answerable meta-question "Why do we think we have free will?", I am intrigued by a sub-question, "what would it feel like to have/not have free will?". The positive version of this question is not very interesting, almost everyone feels they have free will most all the time. The negative version is more interesting and I expect the answers to be more diverse. Here are a few off the top of my head, not necessarily mutually exclusive:
Epistemic:
Psychological:
Physical:
For me personally some of these are close to the feeling of "no free will" than others, but I am not sure if any single one crosses the boundary.
I am sure that there are different takes on the answers and on how to categorize them. I think it would be useful to collect some perspectives and maybe have a poll or several after.