There is no consensus on free will amongst great thinkers who are far more intelligent and much more knowledgeable on the matter than I am. I could spend years trying to understand what Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Julian Biggini, Alfred Mele, Susan Blackmore, Christian List and numerous others have to say about free will. Therefore, on an intellectual level, I DO NOT KNOW if humans have free will.
I have often contemplated why the question of free will remains unresolved. I think I know. If we have free will, where does it reside? It is the mind, not the brain, that has a degree of freedom. Of course, this too is controversial as some naturalists, but not all, believe the brain and the mind are one and the same. There is consensus, however, that science has not yet explained how the human brain generates a conscious mind that is aware of its own subjective experience. This remains a mystery and until it is solved the matter of free will remains an open question.
Yet I am almost certain I have free will. My belief that I have free will is not based solely on intellectual argument. From Buddhism I learned the value and importance of examining my own mind. With introspection, I have never been able to puncture the illusion that I am a real self. Does that self have free will? Yes, I can freely choose, subject to many constraints. All of my life experience confirms this and I cannot deny the value of my life experience. Of course, my life experience cannot and should not be of much value to others who confront open questions. I value what I know intuitively and I am frustrated by the impossibility of sharing intuitive knowledge with others.
Perhaps a belief that humans have free will is a minority view amongst naturalists. Some naturalists who believe that everything has a cause may deny free will. Some naturalists also assert that spirituality of any kind, including spiritual naturalism, is meaningless. For me personally, spiritual naturalism is very meaningful but without a belief in free will it does not make sense. A path that includes transformation requires an ability to choose to change and an ability to act on that intention.
I am not free to do anything that I want to do. I cannot fly because of the laws of physics and the composition and form of my body. I am further constrained by the genetic makeup I was born with. I am constrained by the manner in which I was raised. I am constrained by the culture that has influenced my life. I am constrained by the limits of my intelligence. I am constrained by my finite knowledge. I am constrained by my life experience.
Yet, while I may not have very much freedom, does any degree of freedom remain that is beyond these constraints? YES! For example, I can freely choose a path of spiritual growth and transformation, but because of all the constraints, it is not an easy path. In making this choice, I am my own agent, and my act has no cause other than my own free choice. And the very idea that I can be an uncaused cause of my own actions is anathema to some naturalists.
At the same time, I am intrigued by the idea that the self is an illusion and that free will is an illusion. Perhaps reality is an illusion. Perhaps it is all illusions all the way down. I may be wrong. I must be wrong because, objectively, it seems extremely unlikely that I am the one human being who has this stuff all figured out.
My belief that I have free will connects to my spiritual journey.
Mindfulness is a part of my spiritual journey. What am I mindful of? Daily, I try to be mindful of my breath, only my breath, while also trying to stop the usually uncontrolled stream of thoughts racing through my mind. This practice helps to ground me.
I am also mindful of my free will. I am in awe of the reality that physical brain generates a mind with free will. Mindful awareness of this great mystery is an aspect of my spiritual practice. I am in awe of the reality that the great minds of this world have not solved this mystery. I am skeptical that it will be solved in my lifetime and I live with an awareness of how little I know about free will.
In my opinion, the best intellectual stance on free will is an agnostic position. At this time, no one knows if human beings have free will. It is the mind, not the brain, that may have free will. But it is not known how this occurs, only that it does occur. After the mind-body problem is solved, and it may never be, it may become possible to settle the question of free will.
It seems to me that everyone who has a position on the question of free will has incomplete knowledge. It is not possible for it to be otherwise. The amount of information on free will exceeds the human capacity to process.
A website that I sometimes browse is BARANG, a philosophy site by Mark in Malaysia, which has a section of a list of books relating to the hard problem of consciousness. This listing is very comprehensive and continues to be updated. There are 65 books listed in the 2018 section, only one of which I have read - Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity & Who We Really Are by John Horgan. There are 40 books listed in the 2019 section, only one of which I have read - Why Free Will Is Real by Christian List. Clearly, there is much I do not know.
Another good website is PhilPapers. There are 8,675 papers on free will. But this is merely a small subsection of the Philosophy of Mind category which has over 95,000 papers. I suspect there are very few experts on the subject of free will. Again, I am very aware of how little I know.
Another good website with a comprehensive section on free will is The Information Philosopher. It lists dozens of core concepts, dozens of philosophers and dozens of scientists. It does not list Christian List so perhaps this site is not being updated.
I will now comment on an article by Susan Blackmore posted on the Spiritual Naturalist Society website on March 25, 2013 - What am I doing? (book excerpt & video: Living without free will)
I will begin with the points of agreement I have with Blackmore.
So what to do? Many people come to a similar conclusion and then say, “But I cannot live my life not believing in free will, so I will just act “as if” there’s free will.” And that seems to satisfy them.
It does not satisfy me. I am not prepared to live my life pretending the world is otherwise than it is. So I have worked hard at this one, systematically challenging the feeling of having free will whenever it arises. It was with some enthusiasm that I set aside the time to investigate what it’s like to act, and decide, and do.
Like Blackmore, I have wrestled with the question of free will for a long time.
Do I have free will?
No. I am not separate from the perceptions, thoughts and actions that make up my world. And if I am what seems to be the world, then we are in this together. Me and the world, world/me are doing all these actions that now just seem to act of their own accord.
I agree with Blackmore, I am not separate from the perceptions, thoughts and actions that make up my world. Yet I cannot conclude from this that I lack free will. Blackmore makes a declaration but what follows is not supportive of her conclusion.
The illusion of free will does not survive the kind of scrutiny I have given it here. It simply melts away. I no longer even feel its pull. People sometimes ask me how I did it; how I gave up free will, but I cannot tell them.
I too have scrutinized my own free will. But unlike Blackmore, my sense of having free will did not melt away. I continue to experience a very strong feeling that I have free will.
Then I take responsibility. I don’t mean that a little inner me who has free will does so, because that would be to fall back into the endless cycle of the illusion of doing. The little me is a fiction.
I agree with Blackmore that there is no little inner me where my free will resides. I too have often subjectively examined my own sense of self. If the self is an illusion, an assertion that I very much doubt, never has that illusion been punctured at any time in my experience of myself.
I am real, not an illusion, and my free will is not an illusion and Susan Blackmore has not convinced me otherwise, but I would be very interested in knowing what she thinks of Why Free Will Is Real by Christian List.