Jason Snyder:
Is recognizing "no-self" synonymous with recognizing that free will is an illusion?
What comes to be known is ‘not-self’ as opposed to ‘no-self’. No-self implies seeing some ultimate truth as to is there or is there not a self. We cannot penetrate our experience beyond basic awareness - which means that we cannot know the knower. Awareness is the end of the line as far as investigation goes.
Not-self refers to the nature of phenomena - body, thoughts, feelings and such - that as you have no real control over these things they should be treated as not-self - simply because if you do treat them as self- you will be thrown and tossed about by changing circumstances - which is collectively referred to as suffering.
Recognizing or realizing not-self unfolds over time as different ‘layers’ of identification we have with phenomena fall away or are seen through - first with the mind and later experientially at a deeper level.
Free will, destiny, and fate all require a world of things that includes an agent (you - as subject). To cut right to the chase: when identification with phenomena as constituting a self identity is completely seen through experientially then there is no longer a world of things and thus no you in it. Notice that this is saying nothing about whether there is a you or not on some ultimate level - just that in the world of forms, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, etc. - there isn’t one. And when this is truly known then changing conditions no longer have any impact on you. And from the perspective of this experience terms like free will, destiny, fate no longer have any meaning one way or the other.
Are Buddhists materialists? In particular, do they believe that subjectivity and consciousness can be completely explained in physical terms, or broken down completely to physiological sensations?
There are Buddhists of all persuasions I suppose. But Buddha’s teaching specifically focuses on what causes suffering and how one may be free from it. So belief in one theory or another doesn’t come into play really - except as yet another form of suffering.