There is some evidence that will is preceded by action, not the other way around. Good point.

However, if the illusion is of agency—then it’s not really an illusion of consciousness. It’s more of a free will problem.

If the argument is that consciousness is only the misconception within an object that it has agency, then you’re still doing some magic handwaving. How did the object become capable of misconceiving anything? That would mean it was already conscious.

Edit: if the idea is that consciousness is only a behavioral pattern displayed by lifeforms with an internal self model, I’d need to think on that a bit. That’s pretty interesting.

I assume the claim would be that the experience of consciousness is one where a physically stateful information-processing system models itself, e.g., as a means to control its body or its behavior.

when it is instead a passive experience, a perception of control.

Right, like a blob of cells modeling its holistic self as one—assuming the identity of the model. Then believing, as the model, that they are in control of the model. Is that it?

Hmm. There’d still be quite a bit of explaining to do… like how a set of cells, none of which with the ability to model, identify, or believe suddenly contain these abilities en mass. That’s called emergence, which I think typically just means we misunderstand how something works.