You should not only shut your door, but also stop thinking about yourself and explaining your own behavior. People in “flow” seem to be in such a free-will-less state.
A more radical version of this idea is promoted by Susan Blackmore, which says that that consciousness (not just free will) exists only when a human (or some other thinking creature) thinks about itself:
Whenever you ask yourself, “Am I conscious now?” you always are.
But perhaps there is only something there when you ask. Maybe each time you probe, a retrospective story is concocted about what was in the stream of consciousness a moment before, together with a “self” who was apparently experiencing it. Of course there was neither a conscious self nor a stream, but it now seems as though there was.
Perhaps a new story is concocted whenever you bother to look. When we ask ourselves about it, it would seem as though there’s a stream of consciousness going on. When we don’t bother to ask, or to look, it doesn’t.
I think consciousness is still there even when self-consciousness is not, but if we replace “consciousness” with “free will” in that passage, I would agree with it.
You should not only shut your door, but also stop thinking about yourself and explaining your own behavior. People in “flow” seem to be in such a free-will-less state.
A more radical version of this idea is promoted by Susan Blackmore, which says that that consciousness (not just free will) exists only when a human (or some other thinking creature) thinks about itself:
I think consciousness is still there even when self-consciousness is not, but if we replace “consciousness” with “free will” in that passage, I would agree with it.