Huh. I thought the whole starting point of the debate was that people do have "a sensation of having ... free will" and argue what this free will thing is.
I'd never seen the problem put this way before reading the free will sequence, so that wasn't my impression. But I can hardly claim to have a representative sample of free will discussions under my belt.
Example 2: this is not an example of NOT having free will
Then maybe I didn't understand your request. Could you clarify what you're looking for? In any case, here's a no-exhaustive list of things I think don't have free will: rocks and things like them, plants, most and probably all non-human animals (I'm not really sure), human beings who are very young (i.e. prelinguistic), human beings with severe cognitive impairment (human beings in regard to whom we would correctly say that they don't have things like beliefs, reasons, justifications etc.)
Here's a non-exhaustive list of things that I think do have free will: all human beings regardless of circumstances, excepting those on the first list.
So I'm not sure if I can give you an example of what you're looking for. Do you mean 'give me a situation in which someone who is normally apt to have free will doesn't?' If so, then my answer is 'I can't, I don't think that's possible.' I'm not sure about that, of course, given the magnitude of a 'that's impossible' claim, so please offer any counterexamples you can think of.
I also don't think I'm being at all radical in my understanding of free will here. We don't always act freely, of course. Sometimes stuff just happens to us, and I take it we can tell the difference between hurling ourselves at Tom, and being thrown at Tom by someone else. So maybe there's something like an experience of acting freely, though I certainly don't think that it's a sensation.
Example 4: "mind controlled by a sinister alien" is, as I understand, where you feel you have free will, but "in fact" you do not.
No, I don't think the feelings of the agent are relevant. The feeling of having free will, if there is any such thing, is neither necessary nor sufficient for having free will.
I did not want to prime you with my own examples, but since you say
'give me a situation in which someone who is normally apt to have free will doesn't?' [...] my answer is 'I can't
I will try. Here are some examples where you might feel not having free will, which is an easier question to answer than objectively not having free will, since all you have to do is ask someone about what they feel and think. Note that different people are likely to give different answers.
The voices in your head tell you to stab someone and you are compelled to do it. Su
ErinFlight said:
Thinking about it, I realized that this might be a common concern. There are probably plenty of people who've looked at various more-or-less technical or jargony Less Wrong posts, tried understanding them, and then given up (without posting a comment explaining their confusion).
So I figured that it might be good to have a thread where you can ask for explanations for any Less Wrong post that you didn't understand and would like to, but don't want to directly comment on for any reason (e.g. because you're feeling embarassed, because the post is too old to attract much traffic, etc.). In the spirit of various Stupid Questions threads, you're explicitly encouraged to ask even for the kinds of explanations that you feel you "should" get even yourself, or where you feel like you could get it if you just put in the effort (but then never did).
You can ask to have some specific confusing term or analogy explained, or to get the main content of a post briefly summarized in plain English and without jargon, or anything else. (Of course, there are some posts that simply cannot be explained in non-technical terms, such as the ones in the Quantum Mechanics sequence.) And of course, you're encouraged to provide explanations to others!