Is free will an illusion?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is free will an illusion?". Your opponent's style: Devil's advocate

I define free will as the ability to make uncoerced or uncaused decisions. However this is impossible because all of our decisions are attributable to causes found in biology, culture, and environment. We have no control over the starting conditions or development of these factors. And so all of our decisions are caused or coerced by an exterior entity for which we are not responsible. There is not free will, there is only the illusion that we make decisions freely because that is how we can most effectively abstract the complex causation behind our actions and decisions.

You're arguing for hard determinism, essentially stating that because our actions have causes, we lack free will. But that's a narrow, outdated view. Most philosophers today are compatibilists, asserting that free will and determinism *are* compatible.[1][2][3] We are free when we act according to our own desires, even if those desires are caused.[2][3] The alternative, radical indeterminism, just means random actions, which isn't free will either.[4][5]