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Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Explanations for Less Wrong articles that you didn't understand - Less Wrong Discussion
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Thanks, that's very helpful.
I guess this is my sticking point. After all, a billiard ball is a necessary link in the causal chain as well, and no less a computational nexus (albeit a much simpler one), but we don't think that we should attribute to the ball whatever sort of authorship we wish to talk about with reference to free will. If we end up showing that we have a property (e.g. 'being a necessary causal link') that's true of everything then we've just changed the topic and we're no longer talking about free will. Whatever we mean by free will, we certainly mean something human beings (allegedly) have, and rocks don't. So this does just strike me as straightforward anti-free-will determinism.
That may be right, and it may just be worth pointing out that determinism doesn't imply fatalism. But in that light the intuitive grounds for fatalism seem much more interesting than the intuitive grounds for the belief in free will. I'm not entirely sure we're naturally apt to think we have free will in any case: I don't think anyone before the Romans ever mentioned it, and it's not like people back then didn't have worked out (if false) metaphysical and ethical theories.
That is because the billiard ball doesn't have sufficient inner complexity and processes. I think the necessary complexity is the computational ability to a) model parts of the future world state and b) base behavior on that and c) model the modelling of this. The problem arises when your model of your model goes from iniuition (sensation of free will) to symbolic form which allows detection of the logical inconsistencies at some higher modelling level.
Actually little is needed to ascribe agency to 'balls'. Just look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZBKer6PMtM and tell me what inner processes you infer about the 'ball' due to its complex interactions.
I agree that your (a)-(c) are necessary (and maybe sufficient) conditions on having free will.
What do you mean by this?
To my knowledge, I've never had this sensation, so I don't know what to say about it. So far as I understand what is meant by free will, it's not the sort of thing of which one could have a sensation.
Further to the other subthread, I suppose what most people mean when they talk about the sensation of free will is imagining multiple possible worlds and feeling control over which one will become actual before it does. Do you not have this?
I wouldn't call that a sensation or a feeling, but yes. I do think I act freely, and I can recall times when I've acted freely. If I don't have free will, then I'm wrong about all that.