But the fact that you continue to try to persuade me of a position I don't dispute - namely that evolution and cultural conditioning determine our choices - tells me you do misunderstand. I think you think I am saying that the first-person reality of free will somehow establishes or equates to metaphysical free will. I don't even know what metaphysical free will could be. But consider the difference between these statements : "you must choose X, regardless of what you want", and "you must choose what you want to choose". The objective reality of determinism (or rando-determinism) is easily misunderstood to imply something like the former, when it really means the latter. Do I care how my desires and values were caused or indeed that they have causes? When you go through a decision making process such as deciding whether to marry someone or take a job, does it matter to you that there is a biological/cultural/physical explanation for your ultimate choice? No, because those same processes *are* your decision-making. Subjectively, you chose what you wanted and so subjectively you experience free will. And that is the only sense in which free will has a meaning at all.