Answer:

To be completely free, or to do something of your own free will, it is essential that you could have acted otherwise. If you cannot avoid acting in a particular way, then your action is not free. While it is generally understood that human beings have the ability to think and act freely as rational and moral agents, the common causal laws by which all human activities and responses are governed are incontestable. It is this conflict that provides the real problem of how we are free.

I would thus suggest that we are free in as much as we able to reject our own egos and preconceptions to give us the widest available potential options in our lives. If we can do this then we are free to choose anything and can amend our lives accordingly to achieve what we choose, which could then be anything our human capabilities allow. Feel free to disagree.

We are free in so far as we experience choice. Some choices are extremely important because we know that possibility A will lead to a very different outcome from that produced by possibility B. These lead to lengthy and repeated deliberation. The freedom we experience when deliberating and considering possibilities must have been acquired in a social context that has led to the emergence of language together with interests, selves, agency, and second-order knowledge. Interests consist in basic needs and long-term goals or concerns. The self has its origin in bodily recognition with the subsequent establishment of the episodic memories that provide us with a personal identity. Self-control arises because we are able to refrain from actions inconsistent with other, more-highly-valued concerns. A sense of agency occurs in the course of the action that follows deliberation, and this sense of agency has sometimes been misleadingly attributed to an entity’s performing an ‘act of will’ – an idea which may have arisen as a result of the mistaken belief that our thoughts are the exclusive cause of our behaviour.