Talk about strange bedfellows! You will never find any ideas supported by a more diverse following than “free will.” What is free will? Allegedly, it’s the ability to “freely” be in charge of one’s own thoughts and actions. It’s the ability to be “in control.” And as I pointed out here, there is almost nothing human beings fear more than being out of control.
It all gets very interesting, however, when you juxtapose the concept of “free will” with the concept of determinism, the belief “that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.” A few years ago, a friend of mine panicked when I started telling her of some of the recent findings of cognitive science. These were findings that substantiated that humans are animals that are subject to natural laws. She panicked because I was telling her more than she was able to consider (I wrote another post mentioning this episode). She wanted to believe in “free will,” but the incredible sameness and predictability of human cognition demonstrated by cognitive science caused her to fear that she might be a robot–a machine that utterly lacked freedom.
Admittedly, there is not yet any way for scientists to precisely predict human behavior in all situations. Nonetheless, my friend panicked because science appears to be headed in that direction. In fact, if the more people considered what cognitive scientists were up to more carefully, they would be burning down the cognitive science labs and think tanks, calling out that cognitive scientists were evil destroyers of all human values. Thank goodness that more people don’t realize that so many scientists are daring to explore what makes humans tick!
We are finding more and more that, as Robert Wright pointed out in The Moral Animal, our emotions are “evolution’s executioners.” We are highly predictable in more ways than we care to imagine, including our biological routines for relating to our children, our parents, our mates our allies and our enemies. Maybe we don’t yet know how to precisely map all the “causes” for my decision to buy strawberries today, but there are many of us out there (I am one of them) who assume that my behavior did, indeed, result from that particular constellation of causes that preceded my behavior. It is my assumption that science will continue to shine its light further and in a more fine-grained fashion in coming years. In my opinion, there is an inevitability to this process. In fact, in the coming decades, it will be impossible for honest people to overlook the thousands of physical connections human cognition must have with its surrounding environment in order to enable the sorts of things that humans do. Someday (though it might be decades away), the concept of “free will” will be considered quaint.
Here’s where the story gets interesting, however. If everything is caused by an unbroken chain of prior events, is there any room for human autonomy? My friend insisted that human cognition was “different.” In her opinion, all of those natural chains of causation somehow don’t penetrate to the level of human cognition. I cross-examined her, however. It went something like this:
What is the nature of all those gaps and causation such that you are endowed with an ability to “freely” think and act? If you are not subject to the causal chain of natural events, your claim is that you must somehow transcend nature. But you are not a very convincing uncaused entity. To the contrary (I argued), your own body and brain appear to be quite at home in our natural world. In fact, if you study other primates carefully, you will see that humans are only incrementally “different” than the other primates. However you spin it, we are much more like chimpanzees than angels.
There doesn’t seem to be much room for “free will” to the extent that one strongly believes in a deterministic world. If one thing leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to your body and brain reacting in certain ways, there simply can’t be any “free will,” as it is often portrayed by those who believe in free will. Who are those Believers? In my experience, just about everyone on the planet. Why do they believe? Because it terrifies them to not believe in free will.
What is the alternative to determinism? Periodic breaks in the causal chain, and nothing less. What must be true about anything that could serve as a break in the causal chains in which we are immersed? Randomness. Capricious uncaused unpredictable randomness. Therefore, if you don’t want to be subject to the well-established forces of physics and chemistry, your only alternative is to declare that you are a creature that acts randomly. Why did you just think that thought? Not because of anything in your brain. Why did you decide to help that person? No reason at all.
To the extent that you are such a Believer, then, how does it feel to be reacting with your world with the predictability and precision of a roulette wheel? The simple answer is that you don’t react to your environment in a random fashion. This much is clear to all thinking people.
Some have tried desperately to save free will despite the obvious rampant determinism we see around us. For instance, some have written of “soft determinism,” (which, at bottom is determinism), while others have tried to find bits of “freedom” in the randomness of quantum physics. Most folks, however, cling to the patently absurd idea of a “soul,” a supposedly ghostly entity which is not part of the physical world, yet somehow interacts with it in predictable ways. But, truly, the soul is nothing less than a ghost and deserves no more respect than ghosts. But I don’t want to seem one-sided here, so do check out this photograph of the human soul at that critical “melding” stage.
But where does that leave us? When you fall in love, are “you” merely the predictable culmination of a complex symphony of chemistry and physics, i.e., a living robot? Or are you a rather predictable being who is nonetheless riddled with causal gaps, supposedly (but not really) prone to unpredictable misfiring, scientifically speaking?
So go ahead and pick your poison: are you a robot lacking true autonomy or are you just wacky and unpredictably out-of-control? If you choose the former, this might cause you to sometimes see the world in a hideous light. That person who was your “Grandma” might sometimes be seen as a complex adaptive system of highly organized and intensely interactive simple parts. Your grandma is a bunch of atoms if you are determinist, though she is admittedly a very interesting bunch of atoms. If you choose the latter approach of non-causation, your grandma must be an inexplicable earthbound singularity. This is hard to believe, however, since you know (you really know) that she acts with most of the same predictable ways that all of the rest of us exhibit. She meshes well with her environment no less so than any other animal meshes with its environment.
So here we are, between Scylla and Charybdis. Or at least that’s my take on it. Either everything is part of a causal chain or, to the extent that there are breaks in the causal chain, they are uncaused (and therefore random) breaks that could not account for any meaningful source of autonomy.
There are many people that will have trouble contemplating this conundrum because they find it too terrifying. They fear that both of these options, if true, would result in everything in their lives becoming pointless. Really, though? Isn’t it more true to say that things are what they are? We do seem to have deeply grounded senses of meaning and understanding (at least most of us do) regardless of whether we are completely ensconced in a network of causation. No matter how far I’d dare to contemplate the causal web that envelops me, I remain an intensely social being who is driven by affect. No matter how philosophical I get, I still care about many things and I still feel strong moral compulsions.
Most of the time, however, I don’t contemplate this topic of “free will.” As was the case with David Hume (who played backgammon as a retreat from his philosophy), I take numerous breaks from my own potentially unnerving philosophical excursions. When I return, however, I always come to the same conclusion: we are completely part of nature and completely subject to the laws of nature. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem that we are completely determined. It doesn’t feel like I’m a robot. It feels like we are actually choosing things that we seem to choose. But I know better . . .
One of Nietzsche’s main questions was how truth can be made “bearable.” He argued that we have many useful untruths that are confused to be literal truths. He contrasted these useful truths with actual truth and he asked “to what extent can truth stand to be incorporated?-that is the question; that is the experiment.” This is the question he asked at the end of section 110 of The Gay Science, where he listed other useful truths:
Origin of knowledge.-through immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them turned out to be useful and species-preserving; those who hit upon or inherited them fought their fight for themselves and their progeny with greater luck. Such erroneous articles of faith, which were passed on by inheritance further and further, and finally almost became part of the basic endowment of the species, or for example: that there are enduring things; that there are identical things; that there are things, kinds of material, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in and for itself.
Why do we fight so hard to maintain free will? Because it is an illusion which has served us so very well. I also think that we are terrified by the thought that there is no free will, most of us, most of the time. It is a great threat to peel back our comforting facades and to really consider that humans are animals that are subject to the natural order. It might even be dangerous. Free will is Santa Claus for adults. We believe in it without any evidence of it. Somehow, “free will” gives us a cheap sense of meaning, even though this meaning is supposedly based to a greater or lesser extent on randomness. Free will is convenient for us because it allows us to exert power by punishing and praising each other.
In the absence of free will, “Why would we do anything at all?” people say. Without free will, praising and punishing each other would make no more sense than praising or punishing an amoeba or an ant. Pushing each other around is how we get things done, however, and we insist on feeling good about do it. Hence, free will.
But I don’t want to end this post on a note that will push some people over the edge. So . . . let us raise our glasses and toast the concept free will, just as we sometimes smile at people dressed up like Santa Claus. You are quite a compelling phrase (though not to me, some of the time). You are calming medicine to those who suffer existentialitis. Thank you, Santa Cause, for making our ride on this planet more enjoyable, more endurable. But may whole-hearted Belivers in free will someday dare to consider you with a skeptic’s eye, at least when they are ready.
One thing that may mute the fear of absolute determinism in our behavior is the recent (1970's) emergence of complexity theory: "Chaos". The basic idea is that any complex system, no matter how predictable all facets of it may be in isolation, is only statistically predictable, with error bars that widen at a predictable rate.
Electronic Computers (barring mechanical or electrical errors) are absolutely predictable. But with a gig of ram (8 x 10<sup>9</sup> bits) changing state at 2 gigahertz (2 x 10<sup>9</sup> times/second) you have a total of 1.6 x 10<sup>19</sup> states per second. These are controlled by interacting suites of software with many millions of absolutely determined precise instructions each.
Even those of us who build or program computers develop religious rituals to deal with the unpredictability of how these relatively simple machines (compared to a flea's brain) behave.
Note: Neurons are not 1-to-1 mappable to bits. Organic memory seems to be stored in patterns oscillating between groups of neurons, allowing gigabytes of memory equivalent to be stored in only hundreds of neurons.
I've got it, first we find out what caused sentience, then we call that God. It's like Teleology, or First Cause argument for the existence of God; Thomas Aquinas.
Dan: Like I say, pick your poison. Either we are completely part of a causal network or we aren't. If complexity means that the causal chains are broken (as opposed to the undeniable fact that they are not completely traceble) we are all unhinged, so to speak.
In fact, whenever I read the paper and learn of all of the insanity that abounds, I'm tempted to vote for randomness.
I don't think determinism is a valid concept. It sounds very much like the religious concept of manifest destiny. Some would argue that if we have no say in the events that structure out existence, then why bother existing at all?
But do we ultimately control our lives? Certainly not. We interact with the myriad events that for a web of interaction. Through this process, we learn to recognize situations that are similar to one previously experienced, and apply responses found to be usefule in the past.
When a child first learns to ride a bicycle, the responses needed to maintain balance during standing or walking become a liability. A bicycle in motion balances it self through the gyroscopic effect of the wheels. However, once the new skills are learned, they are easily applied to a motorbike at a later age.
We are creatures of habit. This is largley how we learn. We find a behaviour that seems to benefit us in a specific situation, later, similar situations will trigger that response. This relieves our higher reasoning ability of the burden of reinventing common behaviours so that is can tackle more complex problems.
These learned responses however, can make us predictable.
As a teenager, I learned a simple "mind-reading" trick. I would hand someone a disk of cardboard with a series of strange symbols around the edge. I would then turn my back, have the person turn the disk twice and pick a symbol.I would then have them turn the disk again and hand it back. About 90 percent of the time, I could point directly to the symbol of their choice. The trick was that I knew which symbol they were most likely to pick when I handed them the disk. This was based on normal habitual behaviour and influenced by whether the person was right or left handed (which I sometimes misread in their body language.)
I would sometimes tell them that I did not "read" their minds, but that I was "influencing" their choice, which was closer to the truth.
There is a complete branch of psychology that is used to finds ways to manipulate the public for marketing purposes. This is known as consumer psychology.
One thing I learned in control theory classes was that the point of perfect response in a system is just across the divide from instability. That is, the better a system responds to all inputs, the closer that system is to total collapse.
Example from engineering: Modern military jets require continuous adjustment (faster than human response) to keep it on the right side of total flight failure. Passenger planes are much less responsive in exchange for continued flight if controls are somewhat disabled.
What the flight adjustment will be in ten seconds is not known until the time it is needed. The math and physics are well understood, but the situation is too complex to predict.
I don't think soft determinism is such an untenable position. Daniel Dennett wrote some very good books on the topic, most notably Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves. If people want "magical" free will that lets them defy prior causes, then I agree there's no hope for that. But I think it's possible to give a naturalistic account of what it means to be free that preserves most of the qualities that people value, including the ability to make real choices, to mold one's own character in response to reason, and the existence of real moral responsibility.
I wrote a post series about this topic last year that may be of interest.
Ebonmuse: thank you for the link to your thoughtful articles on free will. I looked for a specific thing in your articles—perhaps I missed it. I'll re-read and ponder your articles some more, but in the meantime, I'll pose a question that sums up the debate for me.
Imagine freezing the state of the universe at time t. That "snapshot" will contain all of the matter and energy of the universe. Every bit of it, down to the phases of every wave and the location and momentum of every particle of the quantum zoo. Then consider this question. What if you could run that exact same universe forward 1,000 times for 1,000,000 years each time? Would you see the exact same course of events each of the 1,000 times, or would there be some differences?
I realize that this is a matter of some "faith," but my assumption is that the same state of the universe repeatedly run forward multiple times would result in exactly the same course of events, down to the tiniest physical details and the most fleeting thoughts in the heads of billions or trillions of sentient beings, each of those thoughts caused by immensely complicated bio-chemical reactions. This is not to suggest that the sentient beings (e.g., humans) wouldn't repeatedly FEEL as though they were "free" each time this universe was run forward. In fact, they would feel this "freedom feeling" incredibly strongly, repeatedly, and they would argue that this FEELING is somehow proof that sentient beings somehow, some way step (at least a little bit) outside of the natural causal network, at least sometimes, which allows them their "freedom."
Quantum mechanics: An electron is not a billiard ball. Although we are first taught classical mechanics, in which everything from galaxies to sub-atomic particles are idealized as solid objects to describe their motions, they really aren't. En masse, particles such as electrons can be predicted. Individually, one electron is a spread, statistical cluster of mass and energy. We model them as if they have a location by saying that they "are" in that location where they can be found 95% of the time.
This is not because we cannot see them clearly, and so they appear blurred. They actually are blurry "things". Photons are worse, and neutrinos even more so. Given an exactly stated or applied set of starting conditions, there is only a statistical chance of repeating an exact behavior.
So postulating Erich's frozen universe, I'd bet that, on the scale of galaxies or even planets one would say that they would likely be the same each time. But on scales inherently dependent on individual atomic interactions, such as biological evolution or thoughts, expect a variety of worlds.
But Dan, which one is it? I know that this is a thought experiement–it could never be actually run. If you started off the universe (in all of its most minute details, known and unknown) and ran it forward 1,000 times, would it always be the same? Would the stories of the universe unfold with the same dependability as putting in the same movie DVD 1,000 times? Or would (to extend this analogy) Darth Vader sometimes kill Luke, leading to a different story?
I agree that, from our perspective, the tiny and blurry cannot be predicted, but our inability to predict outcomes based on capricious-seeming microworlds doesn't answer my question.
If we can't say with confidence that the story will often (always?) be different, that would sound the death knell for free will. Or so it seems to me.
Again, I'm not denying that it SEEMS that we have free wills, that it SEEMS that things could have been otherwise than we decided, especially regarding difficult decisions. Based on introspection, I'm free as a bee, it seems. But introspection is perilous. http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=124
The best modern theory says that causality is a statistical observation, not a fact of nature on the quantum level. If you postulate a world in which causality works on the quantum level, then your universe is repeatable.
It's not that the tiny and blurry cannot be predicted because we cannot define them clearly, but that they are, in reality and observably, many states at once.
Thought experiments (and philosophy in general) can prove anything. That's why experimental science was such a revolutionary tool. It can only prove what actually works.
We have no diagnostic senses in our brains, so personal experience and subjective observation are very poor indicators of how things actually are in the universe. We have no sense to tell us whether we are perceiving or thinking correctly and accurately.
As such, we have the perception of free will. We arbitrarily and randomly decide to do what statistically we can be predicted to do. But given a specific stimulus, there is only a statistical chance that we will do as predicted. We are individually "free" to do as we want. But as a group what we want is quite predictable.
Is there a difference between having free will and feeling that we have free will? Does your mind see blue the same as mine does? Moot questions with no useful answer.
Erich and Dan are both correct, but for different reasons. Certainly *if* the universe could be "frozen," as Erich postulates, then its future almost certainly would unfold the exact same way if run forward 1,000 times. However, as Dan points out, this is not the universe we occupy (to the best of our knowledge). The universe we occupy has inherent uncertainty that precludes the essential initial condition that Erich postulates. Thus, Erich's thought experiment is valid, but inapplicable to our universe. Accordingly, Erich's conclusions concerning free will might be valid in his fictional universe, but would not necessarily be valid in ours.
If there is no determinate causal chain in the real life universe (because of the inherent uncertainty), I can (and do) live with that. But that state of affairs (a sprinkling of indeterminacy into a universe that appears to be largely law-governed) is a strange foundation for "free will." Any particular thing could be willy-nilly. "Free willy-nilly," I hereby call it. It wouldn't be anything dependable or reliable, contrary to the way people describe the power of free will.
I think that no two things are identical we look close enough. I don't think the universe would end up the same, even if we "ran it again". At the instant we let time "run" that universe would diverge from our (parallel?) universe.
…Unless of course there IS a designer 😛
"my decision to buy strawberries today"
Always think twice before you go out haphazardly purchasing large quantities of seasonal berries. It is an instinctive trait leftover from our lineage of hunter-gatherers to collect more than we need. Just look in your pantry at all the surplus food. Oh! but if there is a famine or a terrorist attack we will have these cans of refried beans and tomato paste to last us through…
this article has annoyed me as it tries to argue for a conclusion by appealing to science, but without containing any facts
the only common reasoning seems to be
(1) the universe is a deterministic system
(2) human brains are in the universe
(3) therefore, human brains are deterministic
without providing a basis for assuming (1)
Erich, if there is a pre-determined future as you said, “that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.” Then it follows that if you freeze the universe it will unfold the same every time you run it like an old celluloid film where no matter how many times you run it Old Yeller dies. This is because we are programmed by nature to respond to a pre-set ingrained set of responses to a set environmental stimulus. As long as the physical events do not change the responses will always be the same and that is the result of evolution. Yet, as human beings we can go against this pre-set ingrained set of responses and do otherwise.
If we are animals then it follows we would not have civilizations. If we are hungry we would take that hamburger from that wimp because I am stronger than him. If you date my daughter and you are not part of my pack I would beat you to submission and you would now be part of my pack or whimper away a beaten dog. We would mark out our territories and beat up anyone who threatens it (Hey wait is that not what we are trying to do in Afghanistan and Iraq?)
Fortunately, we have a choice. We can choose to not act like animals or we can. That is free will. It has nothing to do with a pre-determined fate by some supernatural being. That comes more from mysticism and primitive superstitions. She has an evil eye or you are chosen to be the One to save all of humanity from the evils of the world belongs to astrology or Dungeons and Dragons (maybe DS 9.)
It is in the realm of philosophers and poets. It seems in the article you have the two mixed up. As for that believer, I think he is upset that he can only respond to the stimulus like an animal and you had him stymied to the point that he was acting like that. Not because he could not fulfill his destiny as some supernatural being had set him out to do. If he did he did not read his instruction manual and was listening to some mystic poising as a priest of his god.
The biggest fear that some have, and I share, is that in a deterministic world there is no morals, rights, or duties what happens happens and anyone that received a negative result can go pout on their own. Soft determinism is an attempt to reconcile morals with a deterministic world, but all free willers and hard determininists side together and say that the soft determinists are quite wrong. The two sides of this debate are called compatibilists (read soft determinists) and incompatibilists. I side with incompatibilists.
This leaves us to two options, either a deterministic world where all possibilities of world states can be calculated (even quantum physics allows) and thus all existent things can be predicted, or a world where those with free will are able to not only break the causal chain, but also introduce their own. Only the free will group can contain morals for only they allow for independent thought and motives.
Unfortunately, neither of the above choices are appealing. Hard determinism would lead to a state where the since of "I" that we talk about is destroyed, thus I cannot have decisions, judgements, duties or rights. Free will leads us to have funky metaphysics for persons (do not read humans).
While I do not come down fervently in either camp, I lean towards free will as a comfort thing. A world were murders and rapes are just the state of nature and no one has any right to stop them, is just hard for me to accept.
Lofi: I suspect that #1 is true, but I have no proof of it. My reasoning is that those who believe in free will are in trouble even if #1 is not true, because that leads to a free will based on causal gaps, a strange situation, indeed. That's what I jokingly called "free willy-nilly."
For the entire interview, see here.
Here's a cross-reference for this post: a study purportedly showing that exposure to the idea that there is no free will reduces altruism.
http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/05/29/if-yo…
From Daniel Dennett: The implications of all this for the notion of free will are many. I have come to realize over the years that the hidden agenda for most people concerned about consciousness and the brain (and evolution, and artificial intelligence) is a worry that unless there is a bit of us that is somehow different, and mysteriously insulated from the material world, we can’t have free will—and then life will have no meaning. That is an understandable mistake. My 1984 book, Elbow Room: the Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, set out to expose this mistake in all its forms and show how what really matters in free will is handsomely preserved in my vision of how the brain works. I am returning to this subject in my next book, with a more detailed theory that takes advantage of the tremendous advances of outlook in the last 15 years.
http://www.searchmagazine.org/Archives/full-denne…
Scott Adams on "free will":
"Suppose we define a creature to have consciousness and free will if it demonstrates the ability to use the external world to reprogram its own brain toward specific ends. By this definition, reading a book in order to change one's mood or gain data would be an example of both consciousness and free will. But a monkey using a stick as a tool to get bugs would be nothing more than eating. The monkey is not trying to become a smarter or happier monkey; he's just feeding his body."
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/selfprogramming/
Erich wrote: "On the other hand, it doesn’t seem that we are completely determined. It doesn’t feel like I’m a robot. It feels like we are actually choosing things that we seem to choose."
We are feeling creatures, and it is so important to recognize what we 'want' to believe. We really want to matter, to be important in the universe, to have our lives be special, to be in charge, to live a destiny. Seems to me we want to believe we have free will, much as we 'want' to believe these other things.
Doesn't make it true, though.
A couple of thoughts: first, if we didn't have free will — if our thoughts and actions were entirely determined by causal forces outside our awareness and control — how would we even know it?
Second, why is the question phrased as an either-or possibility? Might human behavior be a continuum in which some of our thoughts and actions are "free" while others are (at least for the most part) not? Every day we make unnumerable decisions — what to eat for breakfast, what to wear, which route to take to work, etc. — why can't some of our choices be, in a sense, automatic, while others be autonomous? Don't some forks-in-the-road require no thought while others do? For example, Americans tend to eat the same sorts of breakfast foods as each other, and Asians also tend to eat the same sorts of breakfast foods as each other, but Americans and Asians do not tend to eat the same sorts of breakfast foods as each other. Surely there must be some amount of path dependence — a certain lack of free will. Likewise, many people seem to wear the same sorts of clothing styles from one day to the next, no matter where they live, yet fashion styles in America are quite different from those in, say, Saudi Arabia. What causes this tendency toward (unthinking) repetitive behavior? Perhaps it is, in some sense, a lack of free will. Said another way, if we have free will (in some theoretical sense) and we choose to suspend it (or cannot, for practical purposes, exercise it for every tiny choice we must make), then do we still have free will?
I would argue that evolution will tend to favor individuals who can appropriately allocate the level of brain engagement (i.e., free will) to the task at hand. Even if we have unlimited free will (in a theoretical sense), I would argue that life does not afford us unlimited energy or unlimited time to exercise it — certainly not in all cases — so can it be considered completely "free?"
Perhaps it might seem that I am unfairly framing the issue. I'm suggesting that "free will" refers to decision-making that is less than completely caused by physical antecedents. It would following from my definition, that to be "free," a decision would be unhinged from the physical world. In what sense could that possibly be a decision guided by anything meaningful, then? When most people speak of "free will," they claim to be referring to something more than uncaused decision-making, more than capricious decision-making. Most of these people are working hard (consciously or otherwise) to sneak in the little man in the brain. He should be completely barred from such discussions, however, because he represents an eternal regress. That little man is also a trojan horse maneuver–a tactic for claiming that there is a "soul" that runs the brain–a soul who does the thinking for the brain.
I reject these notions. I believe that the thinking process is physical all the way down, and that underlying all of our conscious thoughts are ineffable, massively complex and completely thoughtless physical process. What guides our decision-making is, ultimately, magnificently complex yet interactions involving thoughtless physical matter. The battle against the folk-psychological notion of the "free will," for me, is a battle to bar little men and souls from what should completely remain scientific conversations.
Grumpy: If we don't ultimately have free will (I don't believe we have free will, per my post and this comment), we wouldn't know it. I'll admit that SEEMS that our conscious selves are in command of our decision-making. In my opinion, though, this feeling of complete freedom to make decisions is a powerful illusion. Conscious experience is the tip of the iceberg of cognition. For every instance where I claim that "I decided to do X," there is A) a vast unconscious process that determined that outcome and B) made it seem like I chose to do so without any further analysis necessary.
Many people use free will in other senses, however. Many people say that they exerted free will to the extent that their mental process seemed to make a decision. That is the way I would use the term in normal everyday decisions, but this use fails to get to the thing that makes "free will" a fascinating philosophical and scientific issue.
Even if the processes that make up thought and decision are apparently completely deterministic, there is proof that they cannot be determined in practice.
Read about Gödel's incompleteness theorems, proof that there is no "completely" in any system or hypothesis. There are always fuzzy edges.
Read about Chaos theory, the proof that any sufficiently complex system is not predictable outside of definable bounds.
Remember that all physical processes are built up out of quantum particles, the predictability of which is limited by both Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and the Observer effect for which it is often mistaken.