Thanks for your reply and the links. Again, really interesting stuff, and has had gears clanking and steam coming out of my ears for the last few hours as I’ve done my best to process it all. Now at least I feel a little more informed on the subject, and also have a better idea of the enormous amount of thought that has gone into it over the centuries, even if I don’t fully grasp all of the concepts. 

For me though, this reading has brought me to the conclusion that whether or not free will genuinely exists is academic in a universe where everyone intuitively believes that it does. What I mean to say is that were someone able to give me explicit, easy to grasp and irrefutable proof that we inhabit a fully deterministic universe and that free will unquestionably does not exist; and even if I could fully understand and accept this evidence on an intellectual basis, deep within me I would still reject it. This is simply because my everyday experience of awareness leads me to believe that I do have free will; I believe that I weigh the evidence in any decisions that I make, believe that I am free to chose one way or another, and believe that the decisions evidently influence the unfolding of my life and the lives of others. I take accountability for these decisions, and believe that I should be held responsible for their impact on others, for better or worse. I accept that the decisions I make will have been influenced by my past and current state, however not that they are actually determined by them - I instinctively feel that the awareness that I experience has the freedom of choice over the options before me. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the ability to make these choices is one of the prime attributes of that very awareness. This awareness of choice will not stop even if someone proves that it does not exist, and I would not alter my decision making process on the basis of such evidence. I expect that this viewpoint is shared by the vast majority of people. 

So, to the crux of this. From where I’m standing, there are either flaws in the arguments for the non-existence of free will, (and proof of this one way or another is far beyond my intellectual capability), or, if this is not the case, then the belief that one has free will is in actual fact of more consequence to everyday reality than the actual possession of free will. This latter possibility is a highly unusual proposition - in my life I have generally felt that evidence trumps belief when it comes to establishing reality, however, seemingly not so if your arguments are correct?