On Free Will
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Free will should not be considered in isolation. Freedom is, in an important sense, a relational notion: it concerns how a human being is situated in relation to another living being or even to an inanimate thing. It is more difficult to predict what a human being will do than what an animal will do, and for that reason the human being is regarded as freer. In short, the less predictable an individuated creature is, the freer it appears to be. There is, however, another and largely independent context in which freedom can be understood: that of captivity, subjection, or acting under another's command. Ultimately, before God no being would be free—not even God himself, assuming, of course, that he exists...
Human beings are, in a sense, programmed to experience themselves as free, because they cannot know, with the complete transparency and directness of a mathematical problem, the mechanisms through which their own thoughts and actions arise and develop.
For this reason, as self-awareness increases, one may experience certain ruptures in, or estrangements from, the sense of freedom. And if we take free will to mean freedom in an absolute sense, the human being becomes considerably more difficult to understand. After all, if one begins with a stone as the paradigm of a being wholly subject to determinism, and then defines freedom simply as the exact opposite of the stone's unfreedom, one ends up operating with a concept that scarcely corresponds to reality at all.
I would be interested to hear your comments and criticisms.