I feel like either this has been discussed lots of times since it's a common, good question, or never since people had thought it unoriginal because of that.
My view:
Our brains make the decisions. Our brains are not exempt from physics, so I'm pretty certain it doesn't exist.
"Pretty certain" because the 'philosophy' if I can call it that, relies on the uncertainty that how we see things is how they are(Is "pretty certain" too certain?).
Sorry if I've basically just said "Water is wet. Do you agree?". I was not going to post because I was quite confident on my opinion, and due to lack of experience thought that by extension my 'opinion' was really just a fact that everyone believed. But more recently I realised said train of thought is unwise.
"We must believe in free will—we have no choice." - Isaac Bashevis Singer
IMO the problem with this question is that it is akin to asking: "Do you believe in the color orange?" You can talk all day about it, and it is an exercise that does have some value, but in the end it becomes apparent that differences in opinions are usually differences in definitions. But, if you are constructing definitions, it's worth noting that physicists have revealed that state is fundamentally probabilistic, so this isn't a very good universe for conducting experiments that test for free will.
Plain physicalism and determinism are so well accepted, it is boring. So I want you to take a look at Panpsychism: souls are/the soul is everywhere. The variation I like the most is called Panexperimantalism: every physical particle has a soul part. If the physical particles form a connection, the mind-dust of single souls merge to a bigger soul, more capable of feeling, more conscious and more of the other things a soul can do. So the soul of a person would be like dust before the person is born, would emerge inside the mother and would grow with the age. Also, stones, houses and trees would have a soul, but their souls may or may not be smaller than ours. And an answer with this theory to OP's question could be: „Yes, as everything has a free will.“
It depends what you mean by "free will". Yes, technically everything is a deterministic chain of causality, interactions between sub-atomic particles according to the laws of physics. But in practice, I can make a conscious decision and act on it. So does it really matter? Maybe, if we had the technology to accurately predict the future state of the universe. Until then I wouldn't worry about it.
Yes, I believe in free will. And that is why. If we are simply the result of the complex physical and chemical reactions that govern how matter interacts with itself here in the universe; that's a pretty compelling argument for the non-existence of free will. In that scenario, everything we do; every choice, action, and even actions we decide not to take in order to try and display our own "free will" is just governed by these interactions between cells and signals in the brain. There is no "you," therefore there is no free will, because you are not you, you're just the net sum of all of these interactions. On the other hand, I think that there is a part of you that is uniquely you. Let's call it a "soul". There is this part of you that asks these philosophical questions, or is moved by a certain song, or sees something in a piece of art or writing. I don't think that these things can be taken into account in the uncountable simultaneous equations that make up a physical human. I believe in a "soul," so that makes room for the belief of "free will."Our brains make the decisions. Our brains are not exempt from physics, so I'm pretty certain it doesn't exist.
I have a tendency of going '75 foot tall firebreathing reptiles have bad breath, True or False?' so I can sympathize with your concern. WRT Your actual topic: I appear to have free will. If I so chose to do so, I could walk away from my desk right now, draw all my money (Or at least a lot of it) out of the bank, hop into the car and drive until I ran out of cash/hit a 'hard' border. But I won't do that. I think a fruitful line of questioning is 'Why don't more people cave to impulse?'
I also think it's possible only I have free will(IIRC it's called Solipsism?). What do you think of other humans/animals and their free will? I think this is equally for and against free will. People always seem to act the way evolution programmed them, or by a not-always-helpful byproduct of how evolution programmed them(Evolution is such a bad programmer). Evolutionarily speaking, which is better: 1)To act on impulse, even though you'd suffer in the end 2)No impulsive thoughts at all 3)To consider acting on impulse, and the future implications With the situation you described, I believe #3 is the path your brain took, and that evolution is to thank. You could keep driving if you chose to do so, but you won't chose to do so.Why don't more people cave to impulse?
Yeah, Solipsism is the belief you're the only (verifiably) conscious person in existence. Basically skepticism on drugs. I do consider impulses part of the person, though. Like, I have the impulse to smoke a cigarette, but I can choose to resist that or not. That impulse is a part of me, though, that has causes in decisions I made in the past. And that's basically my stance on that question: Free Will exists because the decisions I make are per definition mine - I am the brain that made that decision. I don't make choices because something outside me compels me to, I make them because I weigh the consequences. Also, god yes, get your shit together evolution smh
For anyone interested in the subject, I found Daniel Dennett's reflections on Sam Harris' Free Will to be a good run-down of some of the work that has been done in the area of free will: http://www.naturalism.org/resources/book-reviews/reflections-on-free-will (N.B. I'm not saying I view the topic one way or the other, and am not interested in getting into some protracted internet argument, lest anyone decides to reply to this with the view of engaging with me in such a manner)
I think that in the practical use of the term we do have free will. In a philosophical use, most discussions online add some vague assumptions about physics (and sometimes horribly bad assumptions about digital simulations) and turn it into mental masturbation about a question that I think has no practical use and that I don't think is interesting enough to debate on a philosophical level.
Everything from science points either to determinism or randomness being in charge. Neither of those are compatible free will.