If free will was not real

[Gemini]

I think they're conflating the two like laypeople do (like that rhyme? )

They are indeed referencing the phenomenology of their decision making but they also simultaneously believe they can do otherwise when they cannot.

So many times in life I have said "Oh sorry it didn't occur to me" when  I had a brain fart about something important and they said "Well it should have occured to you." Silly buggers I can't contra-causally force that thought to occur into my phenomology.

*breathy voice*

You like phenomenology...how's about we get modal, you sapiosexual beast.

Maybe "could have done otherwise" means there's a possible world in which the divergent course of action occurred, and by taking note of it we modify our motivational framework to initiate values relevant to the divergent course of action in the actual world.

(Okay, laypeople obviously don't mean this. I just wanted an excuse to involve modal logic in the discussion. And maybe an informed compatibilist could mean this).

Many many people think their wills are absolutely free whenever their wills are not not constrained. They believe in constrained compatabilist free will/unconstrained contra-causal free will. They mistakingly think that when their wills are not constrained or coeerced that they have full freedom. They do not and they only think they do because they haven't thought it through enough.

I agree with Spinoza on the matter: Spinoza believed that people believe they have free will simply because they do not know the causes of their own actions so they assume it is themselves.

Sure...but the causal chain regresses back some 14 billion years at least. We can stop at salient links in the chain and talk about them as causes. In that sense, agents are the cause of their actions. They just aren't monads originating actions independent of the rest of the universe.

Their thoughts pop into their phenomenology and because they do not know the ultimate sources (which are unconscious and ultimately completely outside of themselves because they live in an environment and universe which they are not remotely separate from) they mistakingly take credit for them. "I am thinking this" they say... but there is no separation from that thinking and the 'them' that is supposedly thinking it. It's not something they are doing it's who they are. They can't think the thought before they think it, they cannot force they thoughts into their head when their conscious self that they identify with is not remotely separate from those very thoughts and in the present moment (which is the only tense of time we are ever actually living in) is our conscious self and identity.

Agree 100%. And that kind of thinking is not only false but pernicious. It leads people to take their own fortunate circumstances for granted and blame less fortunate people for their circumstances; or less fortunate people blame themselves, and just make things worse.

Tasty. And I'm not even talking about the cake. Yum. Phenomenology.

I'm cooking some tasty burgers for lunch. Got any mayonnaise?