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Thank you for your post!

I don't think free will is exclusive to humans. What makes humans special is not free will, but the ability to "predict" the future, a faculty that is greatly enhanced by language.

I disagree, but certainly you are welcome to your views.

In my view, man alone is sentient, has free will and consciousness. The Bible, in Hebrew describes it this way:

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living (chay) creature (nephesh) after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. - Genesis 1:24

And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath (neshamah) of life (chay); and man became a living (chay) soul (nephesh). – Genesis 2:7

In other words, man and beast share the nephesh – the animal soul, but man alone the neshamah.

As you may have noticed, I seldom argue from authority and seldom post quotations. I have been pondering the problem of free will since 1956. I can remember the place and time I first encountered the concept the way people remember where they were when they learned JFK was shot.

My method of thinking about difficult problems like this is to assume that since the problem is still treated as unsolved, I have as good a shot at it as anybody. I read other people's ideas and then look for ways in which their ideas would make a difference in the way the world works. So far, in my humble opinion, no one has defined free will in a way that can be tested -- except to state obvious tautologies.

I have a very simple "turing test" for free will. First a candidate must demonstrate the ability to learn from experience -- that is, it must demonstrate an ability to recognise recurring situations and respond to anticipated consequenses. Second, the candidate must demonstrate a non-deterministic method of coping with dilemmas -- situations where there are multiple competing consequenses. Insects, reptiles and fish pretty much fail this test, and many mammals pass it.

It ain't a complete or pretty idea, but it has a rough correspondence to brain size and complexity, and it has the potential to be quantifiable and testable.