So, agency. The core of my argument is going to be agency. We are in control because our actions often arise out of our own agency. This as opposed to there be

So, agency. The core of my argument is going to be agency. We are in control because our actions often arise out of our own agency. This as opposed to there being another agent being able to decide our actions. For this argument to work at all, we need to define agency/being an agent and establish that humans are agents. Moreover, humans must be at least somewhat unique for having agency. Certainly, we don't want rocks, or calculators to be ascribed agency. I'd say an agent needs 2 things: - Intention - 'Potency', that is the posibility to measure and affect things related to those intentiosn. This has again moved the goalposts, since we now need to establish Intention and potency. I'd posit that, if humans have intention, they certainly have Potency and thus only focus on intention. Intention arose in humans through evolution. Skipping some steps, at one point organisms started measuring their environment, and responding to it. This is a huge evolutionary advantage (i.e. move towards the food and away from the predators). Simple measurement and response isn't quite enough though, but there is another advantage to be had: modeling. An organism is modeling when it isn't just measuring the outside world, but also making predictions. Once these predictions start taking into account possible actions by that organism, and those predictions start informing the actions of the organism, those actions have 'intent'. And that is my argument in short form. Free will arises from choosing actions based on their predicted effect in some internal model. There is some stuff to clear up between being an agent, and having agency over your own actions. It might be some other much more effective agent has more control over you than your own agency. I don't believe any such powerful agents exist though.