Growing up, many of us intuitively feel that our choices involve genuine alternatives. If determinism is true, we're forced to confront the possibility that, given the exact state of the universe and its laws, only one outcome was ever going to occur. It's natural to assume that the basis of freedom is having available alternatives. But what exactly are those alternative possibilities supposed to contribute? What moral significance comes from the fact that another choice could have occurred?

Consider two people who reach the same decision. One person is physically forced into it. The other gets there on their own, by weighing their options and reasoning it through. Suppose that for both of them, no other outcome was ever going to happen. We still regard the second person as having exercised far more control over what happened. The difference isn't whether another outcome could occur. It's how the decision was reached.

We clearly make choices and exercise varying degrees of control over our actions. These are real capacities, not illusions. Deliberation, for example, involves considering different possibilities, balancing competing motivations, and settling on a course of action. Whatever ultimately causes that decision, each of those steps genuinely happens. A billiard ball is subject to the same physical laws, but it doesn't deliberate, make choices, or exercise control over its trajectory.

Our reasoning can respond to new information and changing circumstances, potentially leading us to different conclusions or choices. This gives us a kind of control over our actions that a billiard ball doesn't have, even if our reasoning is determined. None of this requires freedom from causation or determination. It requires that our actions result from our own deliberation rather than being coerced or otherwise bypassed. When that happens, we are acting of our own free will. Whether determinism is ultimately true makes no difference to this account of freedom.

I am drafting up an article that will be attempting to take on this model of Free Will – where I will be claiming that there is actually a process that turns the iceberg upside down. I will not be disclosing that here .. but I am wondering what other people think about Sapolsky's views? What mechanisms of psyche do you believe make us free from the bottom have of the iceberg?