I agree that not to focus on free will first may be a mistake in itself and it makes me ask questions that are irrelevant from the get go.
Just in case you last question is not rhetorical:
In a potentially mistaken model where free will is considered an objective reality then not having free will does not have any feelings and an example is flowing water in a river, it doesn't think feel, or decide, it just flown governed by gravity, etc.
But again, the above answer is useless if free will is an illusion.
I will try your method of defining the opposite first!
My question was not rhetorical. But it was unclear. Water indeed doesn't feel, as far as we know.
What would it feel like FOR YOU to not have free will?
Would irresistible voices in your head telling you what to do give you that feeling? Would observing your arm flailing about without your input? Would watching yourself reach for your X-Box despite knowing that you should study for a test? Or knowing that someone else can predict your actions and maybe even thoughts before you aware of having them?
Think about all these very different no-free-will cases and tell me what not having free will means for you. Not for water.
I was trying to reconcile the fact that in a deterministic universe there could be life with free will, but I am going full circle now and am starting to think that everything is really random, if not I don't see how there could be free will in a deterministic universe.
If mathematicians measure randomness with probability, then there must be some things that have a 100% occurrence probability (in the current universe above atomic levels I presume), which now I see as special cases of randomness rather than opposites to randomness, and these lead us to think that there is determinism.
I think we may have this cognitive bias (deterministic views of reality) because it is extremely helpful to use these 100% probability occurrence things to model the universe rationally, learn, and to predict the future, but it is not the whole story or at least a complete description of reality.
What do you think?
EDIT 1: Thank you all for the comments below. I recognize I am naive in this topic.
Although I am not convinced yet, I think my possible argumentative error is:
P1: I observe free will in the behavior of living things.
P2: Deterministic physical mechanical processes don't permit free will.
C: Therefore physics must include random processes.
I think I only see a solution of free will in randomness, but maybe there are other solutions ( I will read the Free Will Sequence here on LW!)
EDIT 2: After reading some articles of the Free Will Sequence I realize the problem of investing energy around free will questions if free will is just a mistake in our thinking process.
It is something like why ask about time travel if time doesn't exist? or, why explore the mechanics of randomness vs determinism if randomness doesn't exist and thus the dichotomy "randomness vs determinism" doesn't exist in the first place?