If I thought things for no reason at all my thoughts and feelings would be unconnected to any efforts or lack thereof on my part.
This scenario provides no preferred course of action, and can thus be safely discarded from this and all future considerations. Indeed, if it is correct, I cannot discard it, so I am safe in discarding it even if my sole aim is truth, rather than preferred courses of action.
What is a “reason”? Nothing but a cause (that is meaningfully, reasonably, and predictably tied to the effect, perhaps). The only cases in which a mind has a spontaneous thought (that is, one with no reason for them), are “brain static” and Boltzmann brains. So your question is essentially reducible to the question of “Why am I not a Boltzmann brain?”
Edit: I’m not really sure that “reason” is equivalent to “cause”, on further reflection. There needs to be a deeper connection between A and B, if A is said to be the reason and not just the cause for B. So if the cause for “thinking that one has free will” is simply “that is how brain architecture works”, and not some previously-unknown phenomenon, that might not be seen as a reason for the illusion of free will.
Occam’s razor. There are patterns in your thoughts that are very unlikely to exist by coincidence. It’s more likely that the pattern is a result of an underlying process. At least, that’s why I think that I think things for a reason.
“Why do I think it is guaranteed that I think things for a reason, instead of for no reason at all?”
If I thought things for no reason at all my thoughts and feelings would be unconnected to any efforts or lack thereof on my part.
This scenario provides no preferred course of action, and can thus be safely discarded from this and all future considerations. Indeed, if it is correct, I cannot discard it, so I am safe in discarding it even if my sole aim is truth, rather than preferred courses of action.
What is a “reason”? Nothing but a cause (that is meaningfully, reasonably, and predictably tied to the effect, perhaps). The only cases in which a mind has a spontaneous thought (that is, one with no reason for them), are “brain static” and Boltzmann brains. So your question is essentially reducible to the question of “Why am I not a Boltzmann brain?”
Edit: I’m not really sure that “reason” is equivalent to “cause”, on further reflection. There needs to be a deeper connection between A and B, if A is said to be the reason and not just the cause for B. So if the cause for “thinking that one has free will” is simply “that is how brain architecture works”, and not some previously-unknown phenomenon, that might not be seen as a reason for the illusion of free will.
Occam’s razor. There are patterns in your thoughts that are very unlikely to exist by coincidence. It’s more likely that the pattern is a result of an underlying process. At least, that’s why I think that I think things for a reason.
What makes you think that the argument you just said was generated by you for a reason, instead of for no reason at all?