Free will experiments

Warning: what follows is personal experience and therefore not probative:

I would imagine I have experimented with free will over a thousand times, both while meditating and otherwise, and think it really exists, but is generally neglected (not utilized) unless there is mindful (paying attention to what our conscious mind is up to) effort.

A simple thing like ordering your big toe to move provides an example.  You can sit and think, "I want my big toe to move," and after a few moments it does.  More complicated, you can think, "Sometime in the next ten seconds I want my big toe to move." This is more problematic -- you are not exactly deciding when, but just "soon." Sure enough, soon enough it moves, but in this case without a conscious thought -- more like a general directive.

Is the first case free will?  Maybe the subconscious has already decided to move and sends the thought to the conscious as it is moving it.  Certainly, to move, the particular commands to the muscles involved do not involve anything at the conscious level (some claim the ability to actually do that, but I am skeptical).

It may be that we make too much of a demand on our ability to reason when we argue free will, since we seem to insist on proof, while for most behavioral matters just good evidence is enough to be persuasive.  It strikes me that those who absolutely insist on a completely mechanical, reductionist, mind miss the point and demand something that is not and never will be available -- proof.

At the same time, the idea of free will does contradict scientific notions about how things work in the universe and does seem to demand the introduction of "something" beyond the physical.  But maybe not -- maybe we just haven't thought it through completely and must wait for the necessary genius to come along with the appropriate insights.

In the meantime, I treat it like other things that are possible but that we cannot prove, such as that an external world exists (solipsism is wrong), that truth is unitary, that properly proved mathematics is valid, that the rules of logic apply universally.  These are things (axioms I suppose) that at the moment I have to take for granted.