Have you considered that the conceptual tools and assumptions might be flawed in the first place?

Free will is an oxymoron, as an action free of cause would necessarily be free of effect and the premise of will is to affect. We are a small part of nature's process of selection.

The problem with determinism is that as these mobile organisms, our consciousness is a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our conception of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future. The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is conserved, because it is the present, not some dimensionless point between past and future. It creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and amplitude. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

As present and process, the energy goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

Energy drives the wave, as the fluctuations rise and fall.

So the future is not determined, because the process of determination only occurs as the present. Potential>actual>residual.

Given that consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it definition go future to past, it would seem consciousness is an energy. Though it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from the noise.

Energy is causal, so therefore consciousness is as well.

Though our thought process is little more than a referee of the emotions.

As Alan Watts put it, the wake doesn't steer the boat, the boat creates the wake.