I struggle with the words ‘free will’ - they seem contradictory - you are either FREE or you need to WILL something. What would be really helpful to me is defining what it IS and what it would feel like to have free will, rather than stating what it is not. Can it be a matter of degree, just as we are, say, 5% conscious of our total mental activity, can we have 5% free will?

I think we have even more than 5%.

Maybe more than 10% of the threads at this forum are about Free Will. Some threads start on another topic and morph as if they a will of their own.

I don’t think the phrase is contradictory but the concept probably is. I prefer to say ‘agency’ when referring to the idea. I think its a necessary concept socially and it has important functions in religious literature. But I haven’t heard is successfully argued for from a scientific perspective. It just gets redefined.