In this theory, free will becomes a property that is not possessed by creatures themselves, but by creatures interacting with other creatures.
That would seem to imply that Robinson Crusoe lost his free will when he was marooned, and regained it on encountering Friday. Or that when I arrive home and shut my front door, I stop having free will until I go out again.
Only if you stop interact with yourself. Remove the feedback loop where you observe the self and there would be no free will because it would be irrelevant, as there would be nothing being modeled that one could assess to have free will or not.
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.
That would seem to imply that Robinson Crusoe lost his free will when he was marooned, and regained it on encountering Friday. Or that when I arrive home and shut my front door, I stop having free will until I go out again.
Only if you stop interact with yourself. Remove the feedback loop where you observe the self and there would be no free will because it would be irrelevant, as there would be nothing being modeled that one could assess to have free will or not.
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.