
The idea of free will gives rise to a variety of metaphysical scaffoldings in attempts to give it some sense, but all that these can do is to give a ground for the feeling associated with it. The feeling by itself is taken to be insufficient for all the work we would like to get out of this idea. The feeling, may however, be entirely sufficient in that it exists independently of whether the future is determined or not, or even if that distinction is meaningful. Say that the feeling of free will is like the feeling of suspense we experience in watching a movie. This is not to say it is the same, but it is the same kind of feeling, reliably evoked by certain presentations. The feeling of suspense, which can be quite excruciating, is there despite our knowledge that the action is already fully determined, and in many cases even if we have seen the film before. This is to say that despite the irreducibility and depth of the feeling of being free, there is no intrinsic metaphysics that can be drawn out of this feeling. It's an unavoidable artifact of the way we find ourselves in the world without telling us anything about the reality behind that feeling. It's not our feeling of being free that ought to collapse, but the metaphysics that we draw out of it. It's likely that this metaphysical accompaniment is present even when it is not explicit, a sketch of the nature of space and time and of ourselves to which we impute transcendental reality before we know what we are doing. If there is anything pernicious about the belief in free will it is entirely in this inessential accompaniment, and not in the feeling, which ought to be enjoyed in just the same way as we enjoy an exciting movie. Hence, also, arguments for or against free will are completely irrelevant as they only apply to the fictitious metaphysics.
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