Do we really have free will or do we just think that we do?
user
Well, that’s a really good question.  I think there are two things we can talk about here:  The general idea of “free will”, and then the question of how that applies to humans in particular.  

I can start with the general idea, if you like?  I’m not sure if I’m right or not, but my best understanding is that the idea of free will has something to do with human consciousness, or our awareness.  And that free will is about having choices in our conscious lives, and being able to evaluate those choices.  

But it also has to do with what philosophers call “liberty”, or the extent to which we can control our lives.  This is a really tricky topic, and I don’t really have a lot of data or scientific ideas about it, but from my studies of philosophy and psychology, I’ve seen a lot of disagreement and theories about what the nature of freedom is, and whether we have it or not.
assistant
Do we really have free will or do we just think that we do?
user
That’s a great question, and it’s a tough one.  One kind of way to answer that question is through experimentation.  We can talk about humans as systems, in which some parts of the system respond to inputs and other parts generate outputs.  And some systems are deterministic, which means you can predict their outputs by knowing their inputs.  This is the case, for example, with weather systems, which always behave the same way in a similar set of circumstances.  Human brains are also pretty deterministic.  We know a lot about how the different parts of a human brain interact with one another and how the result of these interactions depends on the inputs.  So a human brain is also deterministic.
assistant
Do we really have free will or do we just think that we do?