I do not accept that only two of the three premises can be ‘true.’

If free will exists, then we have the free will to both confine the exercise of elements of our free will to within deterministic constraints, and to remove those constraints as we freely will.

It’s roughly like freely deciding to take a college course, thus being confined to follow the instructor’s attendance rules, but breaking those rules when we freely will.

In assuming that 1) free will is a conscious expression and 2) that free will is expressed in causational terms, we have blinded ourselves to other possibilities.

Perhaps, the very existence as what we are—in all respects—is what we freely are. If we feel that our very being is bound by walls such as poverty, for example, or anger, dismay, illness, what have you, then that is what we freely are, sick, angry, poor, dismayed. In one sense, we could see those constraining walls as defining the class we’re now taking.

That’s one way of looking at it, anyway.

It’s not so much that we freely ‘cause’ events. Rather, we freely are who we are. (Or is consciousness awareness the only valid awareness?)

If we’re not seeing ‘how’ that could ’work,’ it’s because we’re trying to understand it through a causational, deterministic veil.