  The paper starts with the proposal that the cause of the apparent
insolubility of the free-will problem are several popular but strongly
metaphysical notions and hypotheses. To reduce the metaphysics, some ideas are
borrowed from physics. A concept of event causality is discussed. The
importance of Hume's Principle of Causality is stressed and his Principle of
Causation is weakened. The key concept of the paper, the so-called relative
freedom, is also suggested by physics. It is a kind of freedom that can be
observed everywhere in nature. Turning to biology, incomplete knowledge is
defined for all organisms. They cope with the problem by Popper's trial and
error processes. One source of their success is the relative freedom of choice
from the basic option ranges: mutations, motions and neural connections.
Finally, the conjecture is adopted that communicability can be used as a
criterion of consciousness and free will is defined as a conscious version of
relative freedom. The resulting notion is logically self-consistent and it
describes an observable phenomenon that agrees with our experience.
