scrumpyjack wrote: I choose to believe in free will (exercising free will!) and to regard philosophical rejection of free will to be mere academic playing with the meaning of words, and of no significance.
There was a widespread criticism of the UK analytical style of philosophy in the middle of the last century that it had become little more than semantic navel-gazing. And that as clever as it all was, it was pointless because it was not instructive about anything material, and just concerned itself with endless contemplation about the meaning of words. When you find yourself asking what is the meaning of the word "meaning" and then which sense of the word "meaning" did someone mean, then you are well on the way to spiralling into irrelevance.
Continental philosophy generally always retained a more practical and social element, as Asian philosophy always had done, whilst the US diverged from the UK approach with William James who founded the Pragmatism school of philosophy.
Like you I see no practical purpose or value underlying a rejection of free will. It can sometimes be useful to understand how someone's background or upbringing may have influenced their decisions, but relying too much on that ends up that you give everyone a pass on their errors. The rest of the time I think the common sense perception of cause-and-effect is accurate. What I generally notice about events is that I experience the following sequence:
1) I become aware of a feeling or emotion, that represents the realisation that I have a need that should be answered, e.g. hunger.
2) I then employ thoughts designed to turn satisfaction of that need into competing plans of action e.g. fast food place, deli, corner shop etc.
3) Based on those thoughts I then decide on what specific action I will take, say going into a bakery and buying a doughnut.
4) I buy and consume the doughnut.
How much of that chain of events could be predicted by someone with vast knowledge is interesting but not possible, so why concern oneself with it? Someone who knows me well can better predict my behaviour, certainly, but then I could always confound them just to reassert my capacity for unpredictable behaviour.
The reality is that the perception of having free will works very well, whilst it is hard to see how the alternative can work at all.