Michael, hello,
Thank you for your response.
The model offers an explanation at a fairly abstract level, and I can understand the difficulty of reading and understanding it in terms of the existing discussion.
At the same time, as to your questions:
1. Life certainly includes plants and animals.
2. In vitality, the property of being alive, there is an impulse to act, even if only randomly. At the cellular level there must be some molecule that has a tendency to produce a response, even if random. Fortunately for us, since the beginning of life this impulse has been controlled by a kind of attention-like mechanism that allows the impulse to be expressed only in the presence of an appropriate stimulus. My guess is that this is a molecule connected to an enzyme. I do not know how to connect this impulse to existing knowledge, but that is exactly the definition of life in contrast to inanimate matter, like it or not. I am not the one who needs to answer the question of how this happens. I am only pointing out the simple and trivial fact that it does happen. This is a basic ontological distinction. There is indeed a difficulty in explaining it, but the solution is not to deny its existence.
3. I definitely distinguish between free will and freedom of decision, a distinction that, by the way, you do not make in your book: from my perspective there is a random impulse to act, an impulse that depends on nothing. Whoever wishes may call that free will, and indeed there is some overlap between the concepts even if not a complete one. The decision, by contrast, is completely not free, since it is entirely controlled by the attention-like mechanism.

In general, the article turns the question of free will on its head: assuming there is a random impulse to act, something absent in inanimate matter, what model of life follows from it? Does the model, abstract as it may be, explain various phenomena? Is it vulnerable to refutation? What in what I wrote is factually incorrect? Does the model provide testable hypotheses, at least in principle? And is the model heuristic?

And regarding randomness and quanta: even the quantum level of explanation does not provide an answer to why in inanimate matter randomness converges to a classical macro expectation, whereas in living matter, if indeed the source of the random impulse is quantum, why it creates a different phenomenon.

With thanks and appreciation for your response

I did not understand your answer to my main claim: are you a vitalist? That is, do you think there is no reduction of biology to physics and chemistry? That is a very strong claim that virtually no biologist today agrees with, and therefore the burden of proof is on you.
I do not know the “fact” you mention, namely that there are impulses without stimulus in plants and animals. How do you know that? You write that this cannot be denied as though we are dealing here with a fact. But as far as I understand, there is no such fact.
Because of the above reductions, I suspect that biologists also do not know this “fact” either, since in physics and chemistry there is no such thing, and most of them believe in reductionism.
Of course, if you mean quantum randomness, which of course does exist in physics, then even if there is a reduction of biology to physics this is possible, although not likely, because in large systems the quantum synchronization between phases disappears. But then I return to my last remark: you are conflating randomness with free will, because quanta are randomness, not free will. At most you are claiming the existence of randomness, not of will.
As I wrote to you, if you are claiming the existence of randomness, then I am not sure you are right, but as far as I am concerned that is not an interesting question. Even if there is randomness in biology, it has no bearing on the question of free will.
And finally, an impulse to act has nothing free about it, unless that impulse is created without stimulus. And I do not know where you got that from. We are back to the question of the “fact” above. If I create this impulse out of nothing through judgment or choice, that is free choice. To see this as the definition of life means that plants and animals have choice. That is a really strong claim, and I would be glad to see evidence for it.

Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham,
Please do not be angry.
The “fact” is the distinction between life and inanimate matter, which is denied by determinism.
For me, freedom is defined by randomness. Will is an impulse. Together, a random impulse. Indeed, our definitions are different.
The important question for me, and the one the article answers, is: “Given a random impulse, how does life nevertheless survive?” Why do you think that is not an interesting question?
Therefore, if we adopt the terms you use, then determinism is not sufficient, but neither is free will that is not random, as you define it. What is predictable freedom? Freedom from spirit? Freedom from matter? Freedom from social influence? And so on.
By the way, I believe that a random impulse exists at all levels of the living system.
Thank you for your comments.

I am not angry, and there is no need to calm me down. I hope that is not how you understood my words. 🙂
As for the matter itself, just one final comment: determinism absolutely does not deny the difference between the inanimate and the living. At most it claims a reduction of biology to physics, and even that is not necessarily agreed to by all materialists. There are approaches of strong emergence.
All the best,