I always argue we have a non-zero amount of free will, but we don’t have as much free will as most advocates of free will think we have.
I feel we clearly are not swimming in free will because if we were then addiction would not be a thing anyone would have to deal with. If you simply just had 100% free will, then addiction would not be possible. You could just choose not to be addicted and that would be it. But this is not the case, addiction is very real and incredibly destructive. It can even turn people into seemingly not human addiction is so powerful and real.
However addiction can always be overcome, it is just extremely hard. This is why we have a small, non-zero amount of free will. It just takes huge amounts of effort to activate it. However if activated then you do in fact have control over your life and you are able to make your own decisions.
I do have to stress though how hard it is, in my opinion, to activate your free will. It is not easy and because of that I understand why someone might think that we dont have free will.
Another thing that comes up in the discussion for instance is random cravings. Like yea sure I personally get cravings for ice cream sometimes. If I get that craving and I get the ice cream, was it me and my free will that got the ice cream? Probably not. I understand me getting ice cream in this instance probably was not done out of free will. However if you truly think I had NO choice in whether or not I had ice cream I think is silly. It is my opinion that in order for it to have been a free choice then I would have had to activated my free will which I have said takes a significant amount of effort, something that ice cream typically does not invoke.
Unless of course you are actively on a diet. Then in that instance it could be worthwhile to use the energy it takes to activate your free will and make more of a conscious decision either to eat the ice cream and perhaps try to burn the calories later, or to not have it at all.
I don’t know how much free will humans are capable of, but I am convinced it is a spectrum and different people have varying amounts and varying amounts of effort required to activate it.
My main argument/hypothesis though is we have a non-zero amount. The difference between zero and non-zero is huge. If it is non-zero then nothing you have is in your control. If you truly have zero free will then you have no control over your life and that is a world I don’t want to live in. If I have a non-zero amount, no matter how small it is, then that means I have some form of control over my life and I can change my destiny if I invest the significant amount of energy that is required. That is a world that I must live in.
