I don't consider the claim incredible if written "It might be the case that free will is an illusion."
Furthermore, the only evidence we have suggest that what we will is not chosen, but generated in neural circuits outside of consciousness and then delivered to the self as well as the illusion that that will was generated by the self rather than received by it. But this would be something the likes of which we have never encountered in reality - the self generating thoughts. The brain does that. How could the subject who observes the conscious content generate anything de novo?
Also, what would be evidence that will is freely chosen and acted upon by the self rather than received by it?
What you've described is both what free will and the illusion of free will would feel like. We might be able to show that the latter is the case with brain-body studies as has been alluded to in this thread, but not that what you believe - that will is determined by rather than delivered to the self - is actually correct. All you have is an intuition, a hunch, and no way to confirm it. Even with a time machine, you couldn't confirm that you could have chosen differently at any given instant in time.
Think about that. You wouldn't know that you had already gone through that moment, made a choice, or what that choice was to realize that you had done this before or to decide if it was a different choice last time, because if you did know that, it wouldn't be the same you.
There is no price to pay. That's my working hypothesis - that I am just a hitchhiker in this body, watching the brain assemble conscious phenomena, which include desires, making me the "robot" many theists describe that state as being. I'm perfectly good with that possibility.
Sometimes I receive one desire, such as the desire to drink some water, and I simply act on it. Sometimes, I receive conflicting desires, such as the desire to drink combined with the knowledge that I can't because of surgery in the morning, and watch one hold sway over the alternatives. I saw that when quitting cigarettes. Lower centers craved cigarettes and willed that I smoke one. Higher centers admonished me to resist. The latter prevailed most of the time, but there were times when the tug of war was won by the urge.
If I had had free will, it wouldn't have been like that. There would have been no backsliding.
It really is more like I'm an outsider watching this brain and body do its thing, but it's difficult to see that, because the illusion of free will is compelling, and thought of not having it is disconcerting initially. But why fight it? if that's how it is, then that's how it's always been, and if life was fine before when I thought I had free will, it's still fine, since nothing has changed apart from my enlightenment.
An interesting twist on this is Libet's concept of "free won't," referring to higher cortical centers being able to suppress lower ones as with the example of smoking cessation. But this idea just makes the higher cortical circuits the self, as if it alone were me and other urges arising at lower levels were not. The argument there is the same: those ideas come from the brain and are delivered to the mind just as deterministically as the urges it inhibits:
There Is No Free Won’t: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit.
