I donno, that description seems to me to capture in a general way most of what people have pointed to as the experience of (or lack of) free will. Searle might say that the experience of the lack of free will is the experience of there being no such gaps where we generally expect them. That is, the experience of anticedent causes or reasons being causally sufficient for an action in the way perceptions and the causes of perceptual experiences are causally sufficient to make me believe that there’s a tree in front of me.
I mean, in some sense anyone who gives you an answer to the question ‘how does it feel to have/not have free will’, where ‘free will’ is understood as metaphysical free will (the kind that’s at stake in discussions about determinism, say) is confused. Metaphysical free will or lack thereof can’t feel like one thing or another. We can however distinguish between free will (in a non-metaphysical sense) and coercion, or free will in action and the kind of non-free relationship we have with our perceptual beliefs. And the ‘gap’ thing is a fair account of that phenomenological distinction.
TheOtherDave gave one first-hand contradicting account. There the experience of “no free will” came from too large a gap, not from not having a gap. Alternatively, one can think of the feeling of being compelled and unable to resist some perceived external or internal force as “lacking free will”, like an addict in the movie Flight both dialing her dealer and praying he wouldn’t answer. The gap is still present, but what is absent is, in Searle’s words, the stages of deliberating and deciding.
We can however distinguish between free will (in a non-metaphysical sense) and coercion, or free will in action and the kind of non-free relationship we have with our perceptual beliefs.
I am not sure what this “non-metaphysical sense” is. Perceptual? Then it seems like a tautology.
And the ‘gap’ thing is a fair account of that phenomenological distinction.
I don’t see how the ‘gap’ disappears in the above examples.
Eh, I wasn’t fair in my other reply. The idea of a gap seems like a neat one, and probably matches some of the free-will experiences, just not all or even a majority of them.
I donno, that description seems to me to capture in a general way most of what people have pointed to as the experience of (or lack of) free will. Searle might say that the experience of the lack of free will is the experience of there being no such gaps where we generally expect them. That is, the experience of anticedent causes or reasons being causally sufficient for an action in the way perceptions and the causes of perceptual experiences are causally sufficient to make me believe that there’s a tree in front of me.
I mean, in some sense anyone who gives you an answer to the question ‘how does it feel to have/not have free will’, where ‘free will’ is understood as metaphysical free will (the kind that’s at stake in discussions about determinism, say) is confused. Metaphysical free will or lack thereof can’t feel like one thing or another. We can however distinguish between free will (in a non-metaphysical sense) and coercion, or free will in action and the kind of non-free relationship we have with our perceptual beliefs. And the ‘gap’ thing is a fair account of that phenomenological distinction.
TheOtherDave gave one first-hand contradicting account. There the experience of “no free will” came from too large a gap, not from not having a gap. Alternatively, one can think of the feeling of being compelled and unable to resist some perceived external or internal force as “lacking free will”, like an addict in the movie Flight both dialing her dealer and praying he wouldn’t answer. The gap is still present, but what is absent is, in Searle’s words, the stages of deliberating and deciding.
I am not sure what this “non-metaphysical sense” is. Perceptual? Then it seems like a tautology.
I don’t see how the ‘gap’ disappears in the above examples.
Eh, I wasn’t fair in my other reply. The idea of a gap seems like a neat one, and probably matches some of the free-will experiences, just not all or even a majority of them.