[Natsu]

Do you have to know what free will is to experience the feeling of causing your own body to do things after thinking?

Heck, do you even have to know what the sun is to see that it glows in a way the average rock does not?

And yes, I know of blackbody radiation, it's why I used this example. Because blackbody radiation is something you can find in maybe some minimal sense all over the place and yet there's quite a difference between the sun and and the minimal EM emitted by an average rock, just as there is a difference between life with lots of agency and life with very little agency at all (e.g. viruses).

Sometimes the difference is more a difference of degree than kind. What propels us is persistent and internal to the parts of us we control and our own systems are self-stabilizing. What propels most of the universe is largely external and not controlled by anything with any significant agency or ability to deliberate.

[squeaky-clean]

> Do you have to know what free will is to experience the feeling of causing your own body to do things after thinking?

But, how do you know every other human is the same and you're not the only one with free will? And following that, how do you know a river doesn't feel the same way?

[Natsu]

Cogito ergo sum. You only need one sample to prove existence of a thing.

As for the rest, communication. I can share information with other people and debate this. That's not possible with a river.

Animals are in between, they can clearly understand some things but not everything. Moreover we can point to an ability to process things that predicts this difference in our ability to communicate.

[squeaky-clean]

Sounds like ChatGPT has free will under those rules then.