But now we get to another crossroads of interpretation: dependent on what's within us - our consciousness, now? - or our set of memories and deeper biology, the vast majority of which is not part of our awareness, some of it just now not, but most of it not ever. We are far more information-dense than we know. But let's take the responsible approach and own up to whatever is inside our skin and moved by it, whether we feel we called that forth consciously or not.
So "free will" now is constrained - dependent on - whatever is in us, conscious or not. In both aspects, it is not quite "free." The very fact of "free will" becoming determined by a conscious "me" or "I" - even without the unconscious influences - begins to hint at its lack of liberty. After all, if I have power over it, doesn't that make it subjugated, rather than free? Am I separate from that will, or am I the will itself? If I am the will itself, maybe that begins to untangle the knot. Then again, maybe it ties a tighter one.
"Free" will is subject to me, the conscious I, but we might suppose, at least for the sake of argument, that these are identical, the freedom of my will and the conscious I.
But then "free" will is certainly less than free when it meets the unconscious influences.
Surprisingly, also, we have not considered by far the biggest factor in will, whether free or not: the situation. Without context, a choice has no meaning whatsoever. Options can only be evaluated in a given context, preferably with a measurable purpose in mind. Until we look out at the rest of the world, will might be free, but it is meaningless. One choice is exactly as good and bad as the next, and as much and as little of everything else, as well. It's all a wash.
See, we only care about "free will" because it is not itself. We only care about it because it has meaning in context: by definition, a reduction in degrees of freedom. Or... is it? I suppose if there is no context, then everything is the same, which ultimately isn't very free. Perfect randomness out of context is maximally free - in a symbolic sense, it carries maximum entropy - but although the surprise of each new outcome would be at its greatest if you cared, the amount you care is absolutely minimal, if not zero itself. Absolutely free will is meaningless because it has not even the dependency to be noticed, to matter, to make a difference.
The oxygen molecules inside a scuba tank at a fixed temperature are something like this free, but most of the time, even none of the other oxygen molecules in the tank care or are affected by any particular molecule we focus on. Besides, this all unfolds according to deterministic laws of mechanics. Informationally, given ignorance of all the positions, the molecular arrangements resemble free will. The trouble is that the universe is watching, and the laws of physics seem to have a plan for where each molecule is at each time. The freedom mentioned is illusory: it's actually the freedom of an ignorant observer from knowing what they don't know, ie, the positions and velocities of the oxygen molecules. None of that freedom resides in the molecules themselves, which simply follow the contours of spacetime and particle interactions.
Freedom that has no meaning is no freedom at all, or only a very technical informational freedom divorced from any application, as the information by definition cannot affect anything else. As soon as information can affect something else, it begins to have meaning.
One might feel tempted to separate "freedom" and "meaning" and be done with it, but I think if you try that, you'll quickly run into a wall. The trouble is, if you are informationally free - high entropy, true randomness in all relevant degrees of freedom - then you cannot respond to a situation, anticipate the outcomes of options. At the extreme, there would be no such influence in either direction. We might call this "insular freedom." In the traditional interpretation of Schrodinger's Cat, there is insular freedom for the cat to be alive or dead, since no observer can know the difference (until some unarrived moment of truth). As long as the box remains closed, that insular freedom, in a theoretical sense, remains. Inside the box, at least as far as the "deciding" particle mechanism behind the poison dispenser is concerned (and that particle mechanism would be entangled with the entire cat as one system), there is full "insular freedom." But this freedom by its nature depends not at all on the outside world (we haven't opened the box, and we've specified it's not to be disturbed in the experiment). And likewise it has no meaning for the outside world, which cannot know what's happening one way or another and quite possibly doesn't know anything about the box, its contents, or the experiment at all.
What I'm getting at here is that full "insular freedom" is a restriction of "meaning." In that sense, we could consider them opposites, and maybe it would make sense for one to stand as the other falls. But when we talk about "free will," we do not mean "insular freedom." Insular freedom would be a greater freedom, perhaps, if it could know the outside world, respond to it, and by responding, affect it. Yet this would automatically constrain the possibility space, wouldn't it? So "free will" would be less free than "insular freedom," but also more free in another sense. It would have the freedom of meaning.
You see why it's a problem to separate "freedom" and "meaning" and be done with it. They are too intertwined for so simple a solution.
We could say that "intention" is an interplay between "insular freedom" and "meaning" (ie, anticipation, understanding, and influence, all via physics in the inside and outside world). Intention requires some thaw in the crystal of outer and inner constraint, yet also some causality and apprehension of its immediate parameters.
