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There is a genuine psychological reality behind the idea of free will. The debate is merely about whether this reality deserves to be called free will.

Our actions cannot break the laws of physics, but they can be influenced by things beyond gravity, friction, and electromagnetic charges. No number of facts about a carbon atom can explain life, let alone the meaning of your life. These causes operate at different levels of organization.

Free will cannot violate the laws of physics or even neuroscience, but it invokes causes that go beyond them

Our ancestors evolved the ability to act in the ways necessary for culture to succeed. Free will likely will be found right there—it’s what enables humans to control their actions in precisely the ways required to build and operate complex social systems.

If you think of freedom as being able to do whatever you want, with no rules, you might be surprised to hear that free will is for following rules. Doing whatever you want is fully within the capability of any animal in the forest. Free will is for a far more advanced way of acting

That, in a nutshell, is the inner deciding process that humans have evolved. That is the reality behind the idea of free will: these processes of rational choice and self-control

Self-control counts as a kind of freedom because it begins with not acting on every impulse. The simple brain acts whenever something triggers a response: A hungry creature sees food and eats it

Self-control furnishes the possibility of acting from rational principles rather than acting on impulse.

Understanding free will in this way allows us to reconcile the popular understanding of free will as making choices with our scientific understanding of the world.