[Vivisectus]

It strikes me that some confusion sets in when people seem to conflate the ability to make choices according to your preference with the ability to completely control your own experience.

Do we have the ability to make choices? Sure. In that sense I think we have free will. and in general it is what people mean when they use the term.

Do we have control over much of the rest of the world, which shapes both our preferences and the things that are available to prefer? No. We are, to a certain extent, products of a past that we had no influence over at all. We receive a biological heritage that we cannot choose, which develops and expresses itself in a world shaped by a past at which we were not present. We get to choose those things that we prefer, but we do not get to fully choose what those preferences of ours are.

In that sense, it seems obvious to me that we do not have free will.

But the two should not be confused with each other. We may not have a kind of Jovian free will in the sense that we completely control how our own minds are formed. But that does not mean that we cannot make choices according to our preferences.