"Free will in the light of neuropsychiatry," Sean A Spency Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology 3.2 (1996). 75-90.
Free will is an integral part of consciousness; however, if this notion of free will is to be retained by philosophers, psychologists, and psychiatrists, then the idea must cohere with evidence from the neurosciences. Although free will is typically thought of as on unitary conceptual construct, Spency divides it into three parts: (1) the experience of freedom that coexists with an act (sensory motor) which is pre-linguistic; (2) the experiential belief which accompanies an act, which is linguistic; (3) the abstract belief that occurs as an abstraction from specific acts, and is linguistic. This is the kind of concept that is talked about in philosophy and theology.
By citing evidence from neuroscience (such as the fact that the part of the brain associated with the conscious sensation of volition is activated after the sensory motor cortex of the brain) and evidence from psychology (such as the alien hand syndrome), Spency concludes that the traditional three- level explanation of free will is incorrect. More specifically the experiential belief that accompanies an act is not the causal predecessor of the act. Such a conclusion shows that our traditionally held experiential belief of free will is wrong, which thus has serious philosophical ramifications.