Why do I think I have free will?

Some things react more strongly to actions taken by the conscious brain than others. The muscles in the body react almost directly to actions taken by the conscious brain (save some exceptions for involuntary movements, among ot her examples). In animate objects also take a more indirect response to actions taken by the conscious brain. My brain can tell my hand to move a rock, but my brain can’t move a rock without the help of the hand. Then other conscious brains have even more independence, I can try to convince another conscious brain to do something, but the response is not nearly as direct as that of the muscles in my body. The drop off of how directly related the actions are to the conscious brain is huge as we leave the domain of the body, and because of this, we have made an association for the most direct types of actions correlated with the conscious brain, and called it free will. This doesn’t mean we’ve strictly defined where this cut off is, we just know where it’s stronger and where it’s weaker. For example, some believe in manifestation, or metaphysical ways we can act our will on the world, and we also know that we cannot with the power of our conscious brain stop a cancer from spreading. So we appreciate the correlation to our physical bodies and call that free will.