Extremely difficult question who's antecedent considerations lie at the heart of any coherent worldview; I don't believe it is possible to answer this question with any degree of rigour unless one is willing to elaborate on how they see all of reality. It really doesn't help that the Anglo-analytical scourge has muddied these conversations by artificially severing metaphysical necessity from logical necessity - the definition given is indeed a nonsensical concept, as you've identified, and only "God" would have it.
The question you should ask yourself is "free will" to do what, exactly? If a person is drowning and in half of all universal possibilities you save them, and in half you don't, are you really free? Or merely under the command of the law of probability? Kant would say free will is the ability to not make any arbitrary decision, but the correct decision, and semantics aside I agree.
Anyways since I don't think anyone cares about my metaphysical beliefs, here's some intimations as to how I'd answer:
- Phenomenologically, our singular sense of "selfhood" seems to be the most "real" thing to us; as in solipsism. This is a reflection of the singular reality we share and inhabit, like the two dimensional face of a three dimensional object. Does our singular reality ever "choose" which things manifest and which don't? That seems to be a question which is inherently unanswerable, and the best shot we have at doing so is by reasoning that manifestation is not a choice but a necessity (since it itself is the most necessary thing).
- Cosmologically speaking, who are we to say that we didn't choose to be born into this life? "Choose" again referencing cosmic necessity, which you could dovetail into concepts like karma, sin & redemption, etc. If we hypothetically accept that we are in this specific life by necessity, does our reality make less or more sense?
- Humans seem to differ from most other animals in that whilst they cannot choose how they subscribe to certain spheres of influence (ex. family, history, technology, weather), they may be able to choose the spheres themselves. To extrapolate this onto a larger scale, and to combine it with the first point I made, perhaps our ability to "choose" the sphere of influence (i.e. specific reality) we inhabit is the most real thing? This hinges upon a Everett multiverse interpretation of physics, which I don't fully agree with, but it's interesting nonetheless. It is basically an elaboration of the anthropic principle, but applying it to yourself as opposed to the entirety of humanity.
Edit: for the record, I answered "sort of" in that I think the definition OP described is faulty. I do think we have the ability to enact "agency", but it is not an ability that the vast majority of people have.
Also, @Theo1899 , good to see someone else here who's interested in actually educating themselves, rather than transcribing how they'd expect their appearance on a podcast to play out. I recommend Eric D. Perl's books and papers for a contemporary figuration of classic Christian metaphysics, might be a bit too Ortho for your taste but I find it general enough (most contemporary Thomism is vapid and only stresses Aquinas' few errors, rather than fixing them). |