Feeling vs. reality: Feeling free is just a sensation; it doesn’t prove actual freedom. Our subjective experience can mislead us or be misread.
Decisions often seem spontaneous: Choices feel like they “appear out of nowhere,” but this is just how our mind experiences them. The feeling isn’t evidence of independent control.
Emotions are not freely chosen: We can’t reliably control our feelings. Trying to manipulate them proves we are not fully in control. Feeling a certain way doesn’t mean we chose it.
Past actions aren’t under current control: Even if free will existed, we can’t change the past. Feeling responsible for past actions doesn’t mean we acted freely.
Feeing free is psychologically useful: Feeling free helps prevent fear and anxiety. It’s adaptive, even if it’s not proof of freedom.
Belief in freedom is guesswork: Free will is an assumption, not a verifiable fact. We can only guess, never know for sure.
Animals show goal-directed behavior without free will: A dog acts to get food intentionally, yet we don’t consider this free will. Human feelings of control may be similarly misleading.
Personal identity changes over time: The “self” is not constant. Feeling free assumes a continuous person, but we change gradually, challenging the notion of consistent free agency.
Feeling free can coexist with determinism: We may feel free even if our choices are fully determined. Feeling free is compatible with being influenced by causes beyond our awareness.
Feeling is not proof of moral responsibility: Acting on a feeling of freedom doesn’t justify punishment or reward; the sensation alone doesn’t establish moral accountability.
Feeling free is necessary but not sufficient: Humans need the sensation of freedom to function, but the need doesn’t imply actual free will exists.
Religion and morality often exploit the feeling of freedom: We are encouraged to believe in free will to motivate behavior, not because free will can be proven.
THOUGHTS
I saved a child's life last week who was running across the road. Religion and free will believers claim that if I could rewind I could have done something different and maybe walked on by and let the child get run over. Is that judgemental? Yes - until somebody can rewind nobody can say that I would have done other the good deed I did. Innocent until proven guilty. Risky until proven risky.
Many argue that free will cannot be an illusion because it would be impossible for all of us to be under the illusion all the time.
That confuses free will and feeling free.
Humans experience themselves as free. That experience is real - so it isn’t an illusion in the sense of a mistake or hallucination. Having the feeling of freedom does not logically entail having free will in a metaphysical sense. In other words, the phenomenology (what it feels like to choose) doesn’t settle the ontology (what kind of causal freedom actually exists).
But suppose they were right and free will were an illusion.
It is not a serious illusion in a sense. It is not like seeing visions of pink elephants all the time. It is only a feeling and most of us have feelings that could mislead us. Don’t we live under the illusion that many evil things are good all the time? Don’t all agree that evil doing is a symptom of delusive thinking? Don't we feel and act as if we will never die? If we took our own death seriously we would be horribly depressed every time we heard somebody has died.
And they seem to reason as follows. We can't have an illusion all the time. Free will is not an illusion for we sense we have it all the time. That does not follow. What if we have the free will illusion most of the time, not all? Some process could use chemicals to make you think you have free will - and yet you might still have free will.
If we are misled by feeling free, that is a necessary evil for we need to feel free far more than we will never need free will. Life would be awful if we did not feel free. A necessary evil is something that is regretfully needed. People using God to feel more free than they need to is disgraceful. Or to ground free will. There are other ways to feel more free without implying a perfect God put a lie in your constitution and at the core of your being.
You cannot use your feeling free as an important, or even worse the only reason, for accepting the idea that humankind has free will. It is too big of claim for such a flimsy foundation. It is a heap of logical error. Just because you feel free doesn’t prove you actually have free will. This is a classic appeal to emotion or confusion of subjective experience with objective fact. Concluding that all humans have free will because you feel free is a hasty generalization. Your personal experience doesn’t automatically apply to everyone. Even if feeling free were real evidence of free will for you, it doesn’t logically follow that everyone else has the same experience or capacity. That’s a non sequitur (the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise). Feeling free and actually being free are different concepts. Confusing the two leads to faulty reasoning.