emergence and reductionism: free will and the map

How is reductionist theory different from emergent theory? Here's a distinction among the consequences of these theories: determinism and free will. 

On the reductionist view, the causal chain is determined and there's no such thing as free will. But choices are made with imperfect knowledge, including imperfect knowledge of the causes of one's choices. My decisions are the result of a complex of conscious thoughts and biases mistaken for truths, and unconscious pressures: the choices are emergent. We attribute those choices to the person from which the choices emerge, even though there are unknown influences on the person, unknown as to whether those influences were effective causes, necessary conditions or even ignored or fended off and dismissed influences. 

The emergent result is "this is my choice, chosen freely", when actually it's ''this is my choice and here is my story about why I made this choice, but how this all actually happened is strictly beyond my pay grade as a human being.' Introspection affords little help -- the biases obstruct introspective clarity and the influences are not little locateable objects lying about in the skull's cavity to be discovered. Psychiatry is not a treasure hunt. If it were, it'd be successful. 

Think of a map designed for a specific task: to show the possible routes from place A to B. Must it include the shrubbery on the sidewalks? That's not relevant to the goal. Will it tell you how the roads were developed or who laid them out? The history is also irrelevant. The map shows only what's necessary for getting from A to B, the roads, their directions and maybe the landmarks and addresses along the way. Free will is like this kind of map. The information on the map of decisions includes the street names of our stories we tell about ourselves. How those stories got there is not accessible to us (see the myth of introspection post). We're stuck with these stories and these streets, whether it be to congratulate ourselves ("I chose right -- clever me!") or punish ourselves ("It's all my fault"), though when things go wrong, we are more likely to opt for the reductionist theory to find excuses and blame it on them. 

When I was young, maps were made of paper and were mostly schematic. There were some maps that represented buildings, but certainly not anything as detailed as a satellite image. Technology advances our knowledge. I expect the map of decision-making will, like a Google map of the mind, show us more and more about our psychology.