> Long before you’re consciously aware of making a decision, your mind has already made it. > All of the data of cognitive neuroscience are pushing us to repla

> Long before you’re consciously aware of making a decision, your mind has already made it. > All of the data of cognitive neuroscience are pushing us to replace the idea of mind-body duality… This is ultimately an issue of definitions, but for me, those two quotes are the main takeaways. You have to decide whether there is such a thing as a self that exists apart from the couple pounds of organic material inside your skull. Science hasn't found hard evidence of such a thing. If you give that credence (albeit while remembering that absence of evidence != evidence of absence), forget about whether you have free will — the bigger question becomes to what extent "you" exist in the first place. If you're comfortable reducing yourself to your brain (and science would probably suggest that you should be), then it's not a problem; you do have free will, as long as you're willing to define that as having a set of chemical reactions sitting inside your skull, doing their thing. If you aren't comfortable reducing yourself to your brain, the search for free will and a self gets a lot more stressful.