Free the Will?

It is early in 2024 and we seem to have scientific evidence for, and against, free will, both at the same time!

Two prominent scientists, Sapolsky and Mitchell, recently published two books on the philosophical question of "free will:"

• Sapolsky, a bio/neurologist, argues against free will in his book titled "Determined."

• Mitchell, a neuroscientist, argues for it in his book titled "Free Agents."

Sapolsky describes "a science of life without free will," while Mitchell explains "how evolution gave us free will."

I have been reading both with somewhat of an open mind. They are both well written and informative. One can learn a lot from each. Just look at the table of contents. But, neither is fully convincing.

In my conversations with other scholars and thinkers, I often hear hard claims as: "free will doesn't exist." "I have free will." There seems to be some confusion.

I experience myself to be free at least partially. I feel to be at least one of the causal factors of some of what my body does. I can press the snooze button in the morning to keep my body in bed a bit longer, if I want to, whenever I choose to do so. Not always, but whenever I seem to be able to choose.

When it comes to my mind, I also seem to have some freedom, if not full freedom. Yes, indeed, thoughts and feelings can come unbidden, sometimes. But, other times, given options, I seem to be able to choose to pursue one line of thinking or another. The interaction of the mind and the body, on the other hand, seems to be another puzzle for another time.

Of course, many good/great philosophers, ancient and modern, have thought and written about free will. There is no consensus. A PDF by Thomas Nagel on Free Will is circulating in the internet. It is also published in his wonderful little book "What Does It All Mean, a Very Short Introduction to Philosophy," Chapter 6. He makes many good points, yet, eventually, inevitably, he leaves the question open, even if he seems to be closer to the side of determinism. Is it too premature to expect science to provide answers on this?

Penrose, mathematician/theoretical physicist, has also written and argued on how consciousness must be beyond computation by citing Gödel's famous theorems on incompleteness and inconsistency of formal systems like number theory. Granted, will and consciousness are not exactly one and the same, but they seem to be tightly coupled.

One final note: free will may also be an undecidable question like Church/Turing halting problem in computer science.

Given all that, are there any scientific models or definitions of free will? If not, could we imagine there being one if we looked hard enough. Or, on the contrary, is it likely to be metaphysically impossible?