Hi Jason.

“The reason why I resist using the term ‘free will’ is because it seems to require a choosing behavior before a choosing behavior can occur... How did we choose which options would enter our awareness?”

That is part of free will, isn’t it?

“This means that awareness could be consequential without requiring something other than deterministic components and perhaps some randomness.”

But if there is “some randomness” the deterministic components are not the whole story. If there is only determinism, then there can be no randomness.

I have argued that randomness is operationally indistinguishable from free will. For example, if you play go or chess against a much more skilled opponent, some moves of your opponent seem random to you, yet they have a purpose.