Would you give up free will for world peace?

[thorny_locust]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

perhaps it helps to point out that this isn’t in conflict with the following: if we start out in a state where a mutation (or series thereof) provides an illusory sense of free will from an ancestral state without any particular commitment, and thus, leads to a new state of higher reproductive fitness, then of course this state will in general eventually dominate the population via selection. And this could plausibly be how we ended up with such a sense of freedom.

FINALLY!

Why on earth you think that’s not what anybody was saying all along is beyond me.

[Riemann]

@thorny_locust

Why on earth you think that’s not what anybody was saying all along is beyond me.

Exactly. And for the avoidance of doubt:

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

if we start out in a state where a mutation (or series thereof) provides an illusory sense of free will from an ancestral state without any particular commitment, and thus, leads to a new state of higher reproductive fitness, then of course this state will in general eventually dominate the population via selection. And this could plausibly be how we ended up with such a sense of freedom. But this is not what the argument from selection attempts to conclude.

Everything up until your last sentence IS a concise and accurate summary of the adaptive hypothesis in its entirety. (Usually followed up with speculation about the question it begs - why would that confer a fitness advantage?)

There IS no argument from selection that is trying to reach any conclusion by argument and deduction from anything else. All of that is in your imagination.

And to reiterate, the fact that people may have “misunderstood” you is because I think you are obsessively trying to prove from first principles something that we all KNOW is a category error, because it’s fucking obvious. An “argument from selection” the way you envision it could never work for ANY trait, there’s nothing special about mental states. If I propose the adaptive hypothesis for “fear of heights”, all I’m saying is that MAYBE it’s beneficial to not fall off cliffs. But I can not use natural selection to prove that it’s beneficial not to fall off cliffs. OF COURSE that would be circular. To say that it’s an “adaptive hypothesis” just means I’m going to go and study human physiology and gravity to figure out if my hypothesis that “not falling off cliffs is good for me” is plausible.

[Babale]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

That’s just the argument from selection: we’ve got the fitness benefit, hence we must have the illusion of freedom.

I have never once made this argument. The only argument I have made for the illusion of free will is that we seem to have free will, but this is incoherent, so it must be an illusion.

Neither I nor anyone else have claimed that natural selection is a reason to believe we have an illusion of free will. How would that even work?

[Riemann]

@Riemann

One could also turn @Half_Man_Half_Wit 's argument on its head. If consciousness serves no purpose, why does that make it more likely that any particular subjective state corresponds to reality, why does that imply that our sense of free will is less likely to be an illusion?

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I can’t parse that. Could you try and rephrase it?

(I misspoke really when I said that this was turning your argument on its head. It’s more that I think you’re making two separate arguments that point in different directions.)

Two positions you have espoused in this thread:
(1) The simplest explanation for our sense of free will is that we really do have free will.
(2) Skepticism about the hypothesis that the sense of free will is adaptive.

It obviously matters for survival that downstream behaviors correspond to objective reality. But you have proposed that consciousness is not adaptive - that it serves no useful purpose in determining behavior. If that were the case, then there would be no reason that consciousness should correspond to objective reality, it might as well be a fantastic confabulated dream. In other words, skepticism about the adaptive hypothesis for “sense of free will” surely increases the likelihood that it’s an illusion.

It seems to me that if you contend that the “simplest” explanation for our sense of free will is that we really have free will, then you should be a staunch advocate of the adaptive hypothesis.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Riemann

It’s clear from this that you haven’t taken in anything anyone has said to you.

There is no ARGUMENT that “we have free will because it is adaptive”. There is a HYPOTHESIS that free will is adaptive, which is synonymous with “it has a fitness advantage”. That hypothesis cannot possibly be logically “unsound”, because no step of logic is involved. Nothing is being deduced from anything else. The hypothesis PROPOSES THE POSSIBILITY OF a fitness advantage, it does not claim to deduce it.

This is bizarre (but also a little hilarious). Have you just completely forgotten about this exchange?

@Riemann

Well, congratulations on a debunking an argument that only you have made, and an argument that requires a fundamental misunderstanding of what natural selection could, in principle, ever explain.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

It’s a common enough argument; a little googling reveals numerous examples, e.g. this one.

@Riemann

Ok, sure, I’ll certainly concede that there are plenty of people out there who don’t understand evolution and make spurious arguments.

I introduced this argument into this thread, because it’s a common way to counter the ‘perhaps we have the sense of free will because we do have free will’-argument (after all, that would certainly seem to be the simplest explanation). I gave an immediate debunking of it:

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

There’s often some claimed evolutionary benefit to a subjective impression of freedom, but that’s of course nonsense—selection pressure only works on our external behaviors, so it simply doesn’t matter if we’re happy about what we’re doing, or abjectly miserable, as long as we do whatever we’re doing: they’re completely decoupled.

If you agree with this, you could’ve just said, ‘yup, that’s about right, we don’t know why we’d have this free will illusion’. Instead, you misunderstood what I wrote:

@Riemann

I don’t think it’s especially important to this discussion whether our subjective impression of free will is adaptive or an epiphenomenon. But your argument that it cannot be adaptive is nonsense. Natural selection acts on any heritable trait that influences behavior.

Which I then tried to clarify:

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

No, I’m merely pointing out that the illusion of being free can’t be subject to selection pressure, because we’d show exactly the same behavior while laboring under internal anguish of feeling ourselves constantly forced to act a certain way. We might just as well have the subjective experience of just being along for the ride, finding ourselves doing things without any pretense at originating them—because as long as the behaviors are the same, so is our fitness. So there’s nothing that favors the illusion of freedom over the (on your account) reality of unfreedom.

Which is essentially what I’ve been doing ever since.

@thorny_locust

FINALLY!

Why on earth you think that’s not what anybody was saying all along is beyond me.

Of course I know that that’s what everybody’s been saying. I’ve been saying the same thing! It’s just that this doesn’t support the argument that we have free will because of natural selection. That’s what I’ve been arguing (to no avail) these past 100-odd posts.

@Riemann

If I propose the adaptive hypothesis for “fear of heights”, all I’m saying is that MAYBE it’s beneficial to not fall off cliffs. But I can not use natural selection to prove that it’s beneficial not to fall off cliffs.

The thing is, there are cases where the argument from selection works. The behavior ‘don’t jump off of cliffs’ is undoubtedly adaptive, and selected for, and that’s why we have that behavior. It’s just that the subjective mental state ‘fear of heights’ is (plausibly) not the only thing to confer this behavior, hence, we can’t say that we have a fear of heights because of natural selection. That fear isn’t what’s selected for, the behavior of not jumping off of cliffs is.

@Babale

I have never once made this argument.

Then why have you argued against me rebuking it? Why have you, for instance, argued that if you get the million dollars from the dice game, it’s valid to point to the die coming up ‘2’ as a cause?

@Babale

Neither I nor anyone else have claimed that natural selection is a reason to believe we have an illusion of free will. How would that even work?

The same way one could appeal to natural selection to explain why we don’t jump off of cliffs, if one conflates the behavior that’s selected for with the mental state leading to that behavior—which can be only one of many.

@Riemann

Two positions you have espoused in this thread:
(1) The simplest explanation for our sense of free will is that we really do have free will.

That’s right.

@Riemann

(2) Skepticism about the hypothesis that the sense of free will is adaptive.

That I’ve never expressed anywhere. All of my arguments have, in fact, been predicated on assuming that the behavior generated by the sense of free will is adaptive. I’m just pointing out that this doesn’t suffice to deduce that hence, we must have the sense of free will, as is often argued (maybe not by you, and maybe not by anyone in this thread; but then, either you’ve all massively misunderstood me and should’ve been agreeing with me from the start, or—as seems to be born out by the sort of arguments brought to bear—you conflate the two without realizing).

[Babale]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Then why have you argued against me rebuking it?

Probably because I had no idea what it was that you were trying to show. Consider me thoroughly confused.

[Riemann]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Have you just completely forgotten about this exchange?

@Riemann

Well, congratulations on a debunking an argument that only you have made, and an argument that requires a fundamental misunderstanding of what natural selection could, in principle, ever explain.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

It’s a common enough argument; a little googling reveals numerous examples, e.g. this one.

There is no “argument from selection” in the bizarre way you conceive it in that linked article. There is a hypothesis stated that it might have a fitness advantage. Then speculation about what that fitness advantage might be.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I gave an immediate debunking of it:

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

There’s often some claimed evolutionary benefit to a subjective impression of freedom, but that’s of course nonsense—selection pressure only works on our external behaviors, so it simply doesn’t matter if we’re happy about what we’re doing, or abjectly miserable, as long as we do whatever we’re doing: they’re completely decoupled.

If you agree with this, you could’ve just said, ‘yup, that’s about right

I don’t agree. You are not “debunking” any “argument from selection”, because no deductive argument in the way you imagine it is being made. A hypothesis is being proposed. You are not exposing any flaw in logical deduction, you are simply denying the plausibility of the hypothesis that an illusion of free will can influence our downstream behaviors in a beneficial way that compulsion cannot.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Of course I know that that’s what everybody’s been saying. I’ve been saying the same thing! It’s just that this doesn’t support the argument that we have free will because of natural selection.

There is no argument that we have a sense of free will “because of” natural selection except in your imagination. Not anywhere in this thread by anyone but you, and not in any of the links you have posted. You are “debunking” a nonsensical idea that arose only in your own imagination.

[Riemann]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I gave an immediate debunking of it:

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

There’s often some claimed evolutionary benefit to a subjective impression of freedom, but that’s of course nonsense—selection pressure only works on our external behaviors, so it simply doesn’t matter if we’re happy about what we’re doing, or abjectly miserable, as long as we do whatever we’re doing: they’re completely decoupled.

The above is not “debunking” any logical argument. In asserting this “decoupling” you are simply stating the definition of what it means for a mental state to have no fitness advantage.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

All of my arguments have, in fact, been predicated on assuming that the behavior generated by the sense of free will is adaptive.

Then here you are asserting the opposite. That the behavior is not “decoupled”.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Riemann

There is no “argument from selection” in the bizarre way you conceive it in that linked article.

It’s literally in the title.

@Riemann

I don’t agree. You are not “debunking” any “argument from selection”, because no deductive argument in the way you imagine it is being made.

Sure there is. I made it, after all, in the very quoted part, to pre-emptively demonstrate that it’s fallacious, and that hence, that we have the feeling of free will is best explained by actually having free will.

@Riemann

You are “debunking” a nonsensical idea that arose only in your own imagination.

Then when I proposed it, why haven’t you simply agreed with it being a nonsensical idea? Rather, you alleged that I somehow made an argument that it cannot be adaptive, which is the misconception I’ve been trying to shake you free from this whole time. I’m not making such an argument!

It’s really quite a simple matter. Some people (maybe nobody in this thread) argue that us having a sense of free will is explained by the adaptive benefit it provides. But that’s wrong: natural selection works on the level of behaviors, not on the subjective states leading to those behaviors directly (only by proxy of those behaviors). So if there are different subjective states leading to the same behaviors, then it wasn’t the subjective state that was selected for, but the adaptive behavior. Hence, we can’t say that we have the subjective experience of freedom because of the adaptive benefit it confers, because it’s the behavior it leads to that confers the adaptive benefit.

Where people seem to get confused is that they somehow think that I’m thereby denying that the illusion of freedom leads to behavior that confers an adaptive benefit, and hence, can be selected for. But I’m doing no such thing! (Nor am I somehow saying that natural selection ‘creates’ an adaptive benefit, whatever the hell might be imagined by that.) In fact, I’m assuming that the behavior (that the illusion of freedom leads to) has an adaptive benefit. Otherwise, my argument would be pointless!

If we’re now all agreed on that, then we’re back at the start: we don’t know why we should have an illusion of freedom (rather than, say, a feeling of compulsion). It is, of course, possible that this illusion just sprang up as a random mutation (or as a series of random mutations, or as a byproduct of something else, or due to the tinkering of meddling aliens, or what have you), and then led to behavior that provided a selection benefit.

But this manifestly doesn’t help matters! ‘It sprang up randomly’ is typically not an explanation anybody’s happy with. If something with a small likelihood occurs, we typically feel that there is something left over to explain. Take for instance the cosmological constant problem: that it has such a small value seems implausibly unlikely, hence, we’re looking for a better explanation. The believer in free will has a ready answer, that doesn’t rely on any coincidence: we have that feeling of freedom because we have freedom, just as how we have the feeling of a headache because of the headache we’re having, not because of some illusion.

[Mijin]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

No, it doesn’t depend on how I defined it, it depends on whether there is any causal power to the coin coming up heads. There’s not.

That’s the conclusion you wish us to draw about the analogy, but I’m asking you questions about the set up for your analogy. This should in no way be a “gotcha”.

You don’t want to answer the questions about eg the coin landing on its edge, because either answer will demonstrate that your analogy is either not analogous to natural selection, or shows the opposite conclusion to the one you want.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Then what’s the relevant difference? Both the illusion of free will and the compulsion to act (or the love of salad and the wish to eat healthier) confer the same reproductive benefit. That one of these is selected due to that reproductive benefit then is just as nonsensical as saying that you having the million dollars is due to the coin coming up heads.

You and I have had disputes before, but I have to say, this is the worst reasoning you’ve attempted and pretty much a standout on the Dope in general.

You are trying to argue that something cannot have reproductive benefit, even in a hypothetical where it is defined to have reproductive benefit, if it can be shown that something else would be just as good.

It’s equivalent to arguing that someone cannot have taken the train to work if a bus would have done the job just as well.
Indeed, we can just tack that on to your analogy: heads I take the train, tails I take the bus. It lands on heads, and I take the train. Can we say that I received the benefit of getting to my destination?

Just give it up already. My overall opinion on a sense of free will being evolved is not so different to yours. But your argument for that position is just nonsense.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Riemann

The above is not “debunking” any logical argument. In asserting this “decoupling” you are simply stating the definition of what it means for a mental state to have no fitness advantage.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

All of my arguments have, in fact, been predicated on assuming that the behavior generated by the sense of free will is adaptive.

Then here you are asserting the opposite. That the behavior is not “decoupled”.

An event A is causally decoupled from another event B if A could be varied without changing B. Thus, whether the coin comes up heads is causally decoupled from getting the million dollars, since you’d have gotten the million dollars just as well if it had come up tails. Likewise, if a feeling of compulsion leads to exactly the same behaviors, and hence, adaptive benefit, as a feeling of free will, then the latter is decoupled from that benefit in the same sense—meaning that if you have that benefit (which is all natural selection can assure, because of those not having that benefit having fewer offspring), you can’t from there conclude that you must have a feeling of free will.

If you only got the million when the coin comes up heads, then that changes, because we can no longer vary the first event without changing the second: then, it’s valid to say that if you have the million dollars, your coin must’ve come up heads. Likewise, for the adaptive behavior the sense of free will leads to, it’s valid to say that since we have that fitness benefit, we must show that behavior. But since that behavior does not entail the sense of free will, that further step is illegitimate.

@Mijin

You don’t want to answer the questions about eg the coin landing on its edge, because either answer will demonstrate that your analogy is either not analogous to natural selection, or shows the opposite conclusion to the one you want.

The answer about the coin landing on its edge is the same as the answer about the die coming up odd—yes, there is a difference between ‘landing on the edge’ and ‘landing heads or tails’, but that doesn’t suddenly mean there is a difference between ‘landing heads’ and ‘landing tails’. It still isn’t any more true that you can tell that your coin came up heads from the fact that you got the million dollars.

@Mijin

You are trying to argue that something cannot have reproductive benefit, even in a hypothetical where it is defined to have reproductive benefit, if it can be shown that something else would be just as good.

The reproductive benefit is due to the behavior shown, not due to the subjective experience of free will, hence, that experience could be absent, as long as the behavior stayed the same. Having the adaptive benefit thus does not entail having the illusion of freedom, and hence, you can’t say that because we have that benefit, we must have the illusion of freedom. This is logically fairly simple. It’s just like saying, if you can get to one city from another through the woods or over the hill, and you make your way from one city to the other, this doesn’t decide whether you’ve gone through the woods or across the hill.

@Mijin

It’s equivalent to arguing that someone cannot have taken the train to work if a bus would have done the job just as well.
Indeed, we can just tack that on to your analogy: heads I take the train, tails I take the bus. It lands on heads, and I take the train. Can we say that I received the benefit of getting to my destination?

Of course! But not that receiving that benefit entails you went by train. Take a large sample of people getting to work in that manner. What would you expect the distribution of those taking the train and going by bus to be? Perhaps roughly 50-50, if the coin is fair. So, for any random one of these people, what do you know thanks to the fact of them getting to their destination about how they got there? Well, nothing at all! And that’s exactly the argument I’ve been making: that merely having that reproductive benefit tells us nothing at all about whether we should expect ourselves to have a sense of free will. Having free will, by contrast, does: if we have free will, then we have reason to expect we should have a sense of free will! That’s the difference between the two purported explanations.

Think of humanity as one of a large number of possible life forms that, we might say, all show the same adaptive behavior conferred by the illusion of free will. Choosing one at random, should you expect it to have the illusion of free will? Well, if I’m right, and there are multiple internal states leading to the same behavior, then no, you shouldn’t! On the other hand, if the reason for the sense of free will is actually having free will, then each and every one of those will have that sense of free will. In that sense, the latter has explanatory power the former lacks.

Now, if you actually ask one of the people how they got to work, and they answer ‘by train’, that doesn’t change matters. Likewise, if you actually draw humanity from our possible life forms, which has an illusion of free will, that doesn’t make the explanation somehow work!

[Babale]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

But this manifestly doesn’t help matters! ‘It sprang up randomly’ is typically not an explanation anybody’s happy with. If something with a small likelihood occurs, we typically feel that there is something left over to explain.

But every trait that an evolved being has “sprang up randomly”.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Take for instance the cosmological constant problem: that it has such a small value seems implausibly unlikely, hence, we’re looking for a better explanation.

What explanation are you looking for? It seems perfectly clear that no matter how unlikely the cosmological constants that bring about life are, if we’re going to be sitting around discussing philosophy, we are presuming that we do live in such a universe.

The range of possible observations that could be made about the universe is limited by the fact that observations could happen only in a universe capable of developing intelligent life.

So saying “It’s so unlikely that you would live in such a universe!” is meaningless. It might be unlikely, but if 99.99999999999999999999999% of the possible universes cannot lead to life, then we know that the full set of universes that we could even theoretically observe is composed entirely of the 0.00000000000000000001% subset of life-forming universes.

[Riemann]

@Babale

What explanation are you looking for? It seems perfectly clear that no matter how unlikely the cosmological constants that bring about life are, if we’re going to be sitting around discussing philosophy, we are presuming that we do live in such a universe.

Well, there is an implication there. For the anthopic principle to suffice to explain the fine tuning problem, universes with a wide range of values for physical constants must all exist. So apparent fine tuning can be interpreted as evidence for the (level 2) multiverse.

But I fail to see what this has to do with anything in this thread. We have no clue about the basis for consciousness, so I don’t see how anyone can take a strong position that it’s unlikely, or that consiousness influencing downstream behavior is unlikely.

[Babale]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Think of humanity as one of a large number of possible life forms that, we might say, all show the same adaptive behavior conferred by the illusion of free will. Choosing one at random, should you expect it to have the illusion of free will? Well, if I’m right, and there are multiple internal states leading to the same behavior, then no, you shouldn’t! On the other hand, if the reason for the sense of free will is actually having free will, then each and every one of those will have that sense of free will. In that sense, the latter has explanatory power the former lacks.

But we’re not talking about the list of all possible life forms that display the same behavior whether or not they appear to have free will. We are talking about humans. We don’t actually know whether you can have another mental state that results in the same thing, or whether if such a mental state is even possible if it can actually arise through natural selection.

[Babale]

@Riemann

Well, there is an implication there. For the anthopic principle to suffice to explain the fine tuning problem, universes with a wide range of values must all exist. So it can be interpreted as evidence for the (level 2) multiverse.

What does it mean to say that an alernate universe ‘exists’? After all, it’s by definition not part of our universe and completely disconnected from our own in every way.

Anyways, the fact that creatures that evolved in a universe require that universe’s rules to function isn’t very surprising. The analogy of the sentient puddle that decides the pothole it sits in must have been designed for it because it fits it perfectly comes to mind. I think that’s true whether there are other universes or not.

[Riemann]

@Babale

What does it mean to say that an alernate universe ‘exists’?

I don’t know exactly. But what I mean is that it’s very unlikely that I will win powerball at the weekend, because I have specified a single person “me” ahead of time. Whereas it’s likely that “someone” will win. If we don’t specify who ahead of time, it isn’t unlikely that someone will win. But a lot of people have to actually enter the lottery for this argument to work - i.e. a lot of universes with different randomly varying physical constants must exist in order for us to claim that we didn’t just get very lucky.

[Babale]

@Riemann

i.e. a lot of unverses with different randomly varying physical constants must exist in order for us to claim that we didn’t just get very lucky.

We don’t necessarily know that. We know that our universe has a certain set of properties. We know these properties allow life to arise.

We know that other properties would not let us arise. But we don’t know whether those properties can actually vary or not, we don’t know whether other forms of life could arise under different sets of rules. All we know is that we exist in the only universe that we can observe.

[Riemann]

@Babale

But we don’t know whether those properties can actually vary or not

It appears that most values won’t give rise to stable matter, and its hard to imagine any form of life without that. That is the fine tuning problem. And despite decades of trying nobody has any theory that constrains the physical constants. That’s the motivation for the level 2 multiverse + anthropic principle hypothesis.

[thorny_locust]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

But this manifestly doesn’t help matters! ‘It sprang up randomly’ is typically not an explanation anybody’s happy with. If something with a small likelihood occurs, we typically feel that there is something left over to explain. Take for instance the cosmological constant problem: that it has such a small value seems implausibly unlikely, hence, we’re looking for a better explanation. The believer in free will has a ready answer, that doesn’t rely on any coincidence: we have that feeling of freedom because we have freedom, just as how we have the feeling of a headache because of the headache we’re having, not because of some illusion.

You’re not happy with your brain being the result of random mutations. That doesn’t make it false. Why you think that the universe must be designed in its essential construction so as to make humans happy is also beyond me.

That you are determined to believe that we must actually have free will is utterly clear. This determination appears to be blinding you to the fact that you’re contradicting yourself and producing nonsense arguments; as well as that you’re attempting to counter what people are actually saying in this thread by attempting to counter what some other people may be saying somewhere else entirely, and then trying to claim that it’s relevant to what’s actually being said.

Humans imagine counterfactuals all. of. the. time. It’s what we do.* I don’t know whether we actually have free will, in some mysterious fashion, but it’s certainly not the simplest explanation for our feeling that we have it, any more than the simplest explanation for so many people thinking that they as conscious individuals are immortal – or for that matter, that there are fairies in the garden or Bigfoot in the woods – is that it’s true. The simplest explanation for our feeling that we have it is that our minds are so constructed as to produce this feeling. Our minds are also so constructed as to perceive optical illusions. Nothing about either requires that our minds are accurately representing the universe.

–

/–

(No, discobot, I don’t want to send a pm instead. You think my replying six times to the same person in a 358-post-long thread is out of line? That’s absurd.)
/
/

*. What is the advantage to us of being able to imagine counterfactuals, when the disadvantages are so obvious? Possibly that being able to do so allows us to do things that benefit us. If we can’t imagine having shelter when no natural one’s immediately available, then we can’t build shelters – we don’t do so instinctually. If we can’t imagine having a tool that allows us to kill prey, or an attacking tiger, from a distance, then we’re not going to build one. And so on. So maybe that’s why that ability isn’t selected against in humans, despite the fact that it also often reduces our reproductive fitness.

Or maybe it’s just that, in humans, reproductive fitness is enhanced by being able to tell good stories. Maybe that overwhelms the downsides.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Babale

But every trait that an evolved being has “sprang up randomly”.

Let’s try this another way. Take the sentence ‘Socrates if mortal, because he is human’. This asserts that Socrates’ mortality is explained by his humanity. Why is that a good explanation? Well, consider the set of all mortal things. Then consider the set of all humans. The latter is a (strict) subset of the former. Hence, every thing that is human is also mortal.

Then consider the set of all things that have free will. (Note that this set may be empty without changing the logic.) This is a subset of the set of all things that have a feeling of free will. Hence, having free will explains having the feeling of free will. If you tell me that something is a member of the set of things having free will, I know it is also a member of the set of things having the feeling of free will.

Now consider the set of all things that show the same behavior as things that have the feeling of free will. If there are other mental states that confer this behavior—as there plausibly are—then that set is not a subset of the set of all things that have the illusion of free will. Hence, telling me that something is a member of this set does not tell me that that something has a feeling of free will. Do you agree that there is a clear difference between this case and the other cases?

Now, all that natural selection can tell me is that something is a member of the set of things that behave as if they have the illusion of free will. Consequently, natural selection cannot tell me whether something has the illusion of free will. Hence, it does not explain why something has the illusion of free will, in contrast to how Socrates’ humanity explains his mortality, and how having free will explains having the feeling of free will. There is more explanatory power to the hypothesis that we have the feeling of free will because we have free will than to the hypothesis that we have that illusion due to natural selection.

Of course, it is perfectly possible that, in humans, a random mutation occurred that conferred us with the adaptive behavior granted by that. But then, there is ultimately no explanation beyond this randomness that conferred us with this feeling. Things just shook out that way.

Furthermore, we typically expect that unlikely things occurring have a further explanation. Hence, the problem of the smallness of the cosmological constant. It is very unlikely, on standard quantum field theory, that the various contributions to it’s value cancel out almost, but not quite, exactly. So, we seek for a further explanation—because ‘things just shook out that way’ is not typically considered sufficient. We’d like for there to be an explanation beyond ‘we just got lucky’. Hence, it’s also reasonable to look for an explanation of the feeling of free will—which might e.g. be given by actually having free will: then, no uncertainty remains.

@Babale

But we’re not talking about the list of all possible life forms that display the same behavior whether or not they appear to have free will. We are talking about humans.

This doesn’t make a difference for the explanatory power of the argument. That something is compatible with a set of circumstances, and one of those occurs, does not mean that this explains that occurrence. We have an explanation of A via B if B tells me that A; but that isn’t the case here. Again, at least you must note the difference between the explanatory power of the free will-hypothesis as compared to the selection-hypothesis. Given B (free will), we know that A (feeling of free will). But given (the adaptive benefit conferred by behavior equivalent to ours), we don’t know that (feeling of free will).

@thorny_locust

You’re not happy with your brain being the result of random mutations.

I’m perfectly happy with that; indeed, I see no other explanation.

@thorny_locust

Why you think that the universe must be designed in its essential construction so as to make humans happy is also beyond me.

I don’t think there’s any design in the universe, much less that human happiness had anything to do with that.

@thorny_locust

That you are determined to believe that we must actually have free will is utterly clear.

I have to the contrary made it clear that I don’t know that we have free will, and even outlined reasons why I believe a life lacking free will shouldn’t be any less worth living than one that has it.