So with respect to free will, we can instead ask the question, “Why would humans feel like they have free will?” If we can answer this well enough, then hopefully we can dissolve the original question.
Only we can't. The original question was whether some organisms have the ability to make choices that aren't fully determined by outside circumstances. That isn't addressed by answering the question "why would humans feel like they have free will".
a) humans have FW and feel they do
b) humans don't have FW, but feel they do
c) humans have FW but feel they don't
d) humans don't have or feel they have FW
Yudkowsky shows that a way in which (b) could be possible. But he doesn't show that (a) is impossible. IOW,, he doesn't address the original question at all.
Is the original question a bad one which should be replaced? Some approaches to answering the original question are unfathomable (eg the idea of FW as a fundamental tertium datur beyond determinism and indeterminism), others are not. Some naturalistic theories of FW are potentially empirically testable, so throwing out the question involves throwing out a set of empirically respectable theories
ETA: The falling tree question: recognising that different sides in the argument are really using different definitions does dissolve the question. But Yudkowsky's approach to Free Will is not analogous, because there is no side of the debate that unknowingly defines FW as the feeling of being able to make choices as opposed to the ability. EY introduced that definition. (There is a disagreement about compatibilist versus libertarian notions of Free WIll, which I have deliberately omitted for simpliciity, but that is still not anologous to the Falling Tree problem because the various sides are quite aware that their definitions differs. "It all depends what you mean by..")..
"Outside circumstances" including what? Your definition is too vague.
As far as I've been able to tell, the question is confused. Before you ask what it is, first you must define what free will is, in a rigorous and exclusive manner; your definition shouldn't include things you don't want it to include, nor should it exclude things you don't want to exclude. You've managed to include everything you want included, but your definition fails to exclude things you don't want included - namely, your definition includes Eliezer's definition.
Because E...
I'm participating in a university course on free will. On the online forum, someone asked me to summarise Eliezer's solution to the free will problem, and I did it like this. Is it accurate in this form? How should I change it?
“I'll try to summarise Yudkowsky's argument.
As Anneke pointed out, it's kinda difficult to decide what the concept of free will means. How would particles or humans behave differently if they had free will compared to if they didn't? It doesn't seem like our argument is about what we actually expect to see happening.
This is similar to arguing about whether a tree falling in a deserted forest makes any noise. If two people are arguing about this, they probably agree that if we put a microphone in the forest, it would pick up vibrations. And they also agree that no-one is having the sense experience of hearing the tree fall. So they're arguing over what 'sound' means. Yudkowsky proposes a psychological reason why people may have that particular confusion, based on how human brains work.
So with respect to free will, we can instead ask the question, “Why would humans feel like they have free will?” If we can answer this well enough, then hopefully we can dissolve the original question.
It feels like I choose between some of my possible futures. I can imagine waking up tomorrow and going to my Engineering lecture, or staying in my room and using Facebook. Both of those imaginings feel equally 'possible'.
Humans execute a decision making algorithm which is fairly similar to the following one.
List all your possible actions. For my lecture example, that was “Go to lecture” and “Stay home.”
Predict the state of the universe after pretending that you will take each possible action. We end up with “Buck has learnt stuff but not Facebooked” and “Buck has not learnt stuff but has Facebooked.”
Decide which is your favourite outcome. In this case, I'd rather have learnt stuff. So that's option 2.
Execute the action associated with the best outcome. In this case, I'd go to my lecture.
Note that the above algorithm can be made more complex and powerful, for example by incorporating probability and quantifying your preferences as a utility function.
As humans, our brains need the capacity to pretend that we could choose different things, so that we can imagine the outcomes, and pick effectively. The way our brain implements this is by considering those possible worlds which we could reach through our choices, and by treating them as possible.
So now we have a fairly convincing explanation of why it would feel like we have free will, or the ability to choose between various actions: it's how our decision making algorithm feels from the inside.”