Is there a more sensible definition of the word 'freedom', than very bluntly just being able to do something you want to, or rather, being able to choose to do or not to do something, to maybe do it some other time or to do it right now? That's my simple minded way of looking at freedom, anyway.
Well, i think i AM free to do what i want.
So the point that people like sam Harris make, is that i am not free to do what i want because the fact that i want it wasn't my choice in the first place.
(I think that sam Harris would even go as far as to say that actually 'i' don't even realy exist in the sense that i belief i do)
But i would say that that's realy a different thing. You're then more talking about freedom on a meta-level. You should maybe call that meta-freedom.
I think i'm free, GIVEN that i have desires, ability's and so on: the mere fact that wanting it wasn't realy my choice, doesn't make it any less true that i can reflect on those desires, and can decide to go with them or not.
But even saying that wanting something is not a choice is not completely true.
You can think about your desires and come to a conclusion like "i should be less selfish", or "i should think more about my own interests, instead of Always putting the interests of others first". And such processes of thought can in the long run realy influence the desires that you may have.
But i admit that eventually you do run into a sort of brick wall. Eventually, we all have these primal instincts that we cannot ever totally escape from. But these desires are to a certain extent malleable. You can train things like willpower or critical thinking.
So there is some freedom as well on the meta-level, though significantly less than on the basic, subjective level.
You could decide to not give in as much as you use to do, to the tendency to eat a lot of junkfood. But that realy does take some effort.
But the fact that you would want to make such a decission, could be driven by a concern for your own wellbeing. Wich again, is not realy that much of a choice. Everybody has at least SOME level of concern for his own wellbeing.
So there seems to be yet another level, a meta-meta-level, where we have even less controll.
And when you look at individuals from that perspective, like ofthevoid46 does, then indeed humans do not seem to have a lot of freedom.
But to me that's like saying that all your actions are ultimately just the result of you being born, in wich you had no choice at all, so in the end you yourself didn't realy play any role at all in anything you ever did. You're basically saying that all these people had no choice in being born a human, so they don't have ANY freedom at all, as all else follows from the basic givens.