What is your Freedom?

...I would advise you to check the meaning of "Suggestion"imprinting of a specific need is the key word here, but still, a very linear approach to the probable complex cause for your own, as you call it "choice"...

I am pretty sure I would not have wanted to go to that restaurant had it not been for my friend's suggestion. But I was not forced to want to go because he suggested it, and, therefore, unless you know something I don't know about why I wanted to go to the restaurant, I went to the restaurant because I wanted to go, and no one forced me to want to go. And, that's the way I see it. If I am not compelled to do something, and I want to do it, then I did it of my own free will.

Agreeing

What is "a free will based way". I thought that to do something of your own free will was not to be compelled to do it, so that you need not have done it, and could have done something else if you had want to do. What do you mean by it? And why do you think what you mean has anything to do with free will?

"favourable" in order to your conscientious option to erupt...

Why do you think I was compelled? What, or who, compelled me? Remember, I wanted to go to that new restaurant. So, how can I be compelled to do what I wanted to do?

The question is WHY did you want it ?
What caused that will of yours...

I told you. My friend's suggestion. But what has that to do with it? Why does it matter why I wanted it? If I wanted it, and I did it because I wanted to do it, then why did I not do it of my own free will?

No. So what if there is a cause of my wanting, as there is? I still did it because I wanted to do it. And, if I did it because I wanted to do it, then I was not forced to do it. And, if I was not forced to do it, then why do you think I did not do it of my own free will? (Would I have free will if I did it because I did not want to do it?) I don't get the reasoning. If I am forced to do it, then I don't have free will because I am forced to do it. But if I am not forced to do it, then I don't have free will anyway. What is this? Heads I win, tails you lose?

Well, I don't play games which are set up so that I cannot win. Try setting one up so that I have a chance.

The issue, as I already put it, is whether human actions and choices cannot be both free and predictable. Why can it not be predicted, completely accurately, that a person will do something freely??

But doesn't prediction imply a tracing of the causes that determine some future event?
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I don't know for certain. But that doesn't matter. Suppose it is true. What has that to do with free will? In fact, what has causation to do with free will, rather than the kind of causation? Causation is not inconsistent with human freedom, although certain kinds of causation are.

Is willing a kind of cause?

It is, I suppose, a cause of action. So it is a kind of cause. But not the kind of cause that means that the action is not freely done.

If willing is a kind of cause of action then it is the kind of cause that allows for the possibility that that action can be freely done. This is precisely the kind of cause that the determinist of the Laplace variety refuses to recognize.

Is it that you want to set aside the free will vs. determinism metaphysical question and focus instead upon the freedom vs. coercion socio political question?

But what you call the issue of metaphysical freedom is a pseudo-issue which supposes that there is no difference between causation and compulsion. And that seems to me clearly false. If you suppose that all causation is compulsion, then, you simply set aside the issue of human freedom, and you can discuss only whether determinism is true or not.

I am interested in preserving the issue of human freedom as separate from determinism. How is compulsion different from causation? It cannot be false just because we want to preserve the issue of human freedom.

If compulsion is causation then human freedom is a non-issue but human freedom is an issue, therefore compulsion must be different from causation. That's no proof for human freedom.