Indeterminism

So philosophers these days really seem to want us to have Free Will but for some reason what matter is that we have the words Free Will used to describe us rather than that we get any of the implied results (ie the ability to make choices). At some point philosophy ended up in this bizarrely degenerate state where the two sides are:

Determinism: We can predict everything.
Free Will: Everything that is not determinism.

This strikes me as really stupid. The phrase Free Will carries a lot of implied baggage that the definition doesn't seem to hold anymore.

Indeterminism is the idea of randomness in the universe. I assumed, when I heard it described, that it was modernized determinism. The world is controlled by rules and its okay for some of those rules to be probabilistic. This is what I, and it seems like many scientifically minded people, tend to believe. Apparently, however, this is really Free Will not Determinism even though your will is not free at all.

Has free will just been shredded to the point where the technical use bares no resemblance to the common use or am I misunderstanding things?

I mean presumably a coin has no ability to make choices yet philosophers seem to have argued themselves into a semantical corner where it has free will once you throw it into the air simply because the process is now unpredictable.

I think the problem with Free Will is that most of the answers people give tend to focus on the indeterminate parts of physics or quantum level phenomenon when the question is one ultimately of psychology and physiology.

Like, not to derail the thread so I'll try not to rant, my biggest question to someone who believes in "Free Will" would be, who or what is free? Modern psychology has answered numerous questions about how we make decisions and attribute value to things, and none really leave room for a non-determinist view of problem solving or choice. The will we feel we have is really a product of the systems that have already planned, and in many cases, executed the actions we think we have control over.

Actually, I think indeterminism may be the best way to describe the psychology of free will. Certainly, there is no "choice" in the system (there is no agent that is able to choose), but actions and cognitions are based on a probability associated with various level of neuronal activity at any given time.

Link to the wiki article on Indeterminism for anyone who's interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism

Originally posted by Oliver North
I think the problem with Free Will is that most of the answers people give tend to focus on the indeterminate parts of physics or quantum level phenomenon when the question is one ultimately of psychology and physiology.

I disagree, the physics matter a lot since they're part of what defines the biology. This is why I used the coin example, it attacks the basic claim. If "quantum mechanics is part of determining the output" = "free will" like Penrose and friends say then all systems, including the obviously unfree coin, must must have free will. At this point something has to fall apart. Either the claim that we have free will due to physics or the claim that free will involves choice has to give way, IMO.

Originally posted by Oliver North
Like, not to derail the thread so I'll try not to rant, my biggest question to someone who believes in "Free Will" would be, who or what is free? Modern psychology has answered numerous questions about how we make decisions and attribute value to things, and none really leave room for a non-determinist view of problem solving or choice. The will we feel we have is really a product of the systems that have already planned, and in many cases, executed the actions we think we have control over.

What I usually encounter is the probablistic argument: "People don't do that every time." It seems like Free Will has suffered from making retreats ever since Newton(?). To get Free Will you only have to poke a hole in strict determinism. The philosopher of Free Will, then, never has to answer the question of why people do it most of the time.

@sym

I agree with your criticism of metaphysical libertarianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_libertarianism) since randomly determined behavior wouldn't equal conscient volition at all and just a product of our life histories and probability, which in a way makes them compatibilists of sorts. I also believe the underlying physical processes do have to be taken into account by this debate, but I actually don't think metaphysical libertarians have hijacked the concept of indeterminism. it's still used in the natural sciences and specially in the debate surrounding the actual nature (probabilistic vs strictly deterministic) nature of quantum mechanics and to a lesser extent in evolution.