I think this article is useful when thinking about determinism and free will:
Suppose to be able to do an experiment where we can put a person in exactly the same mental situation (with the same memories, values, character, mood ...) and suppose we repeat the experiment many times, always with the same initial conditions. What would observe? There are two extreme possibilities: the first is that we see that the person will decide entirely at random. In this case the results will be just governed by chance. Half the time he will make a choice, the other half he will make the other choice. The second extreme possibility is that instead the person will always make the same choice.
In which of these two cases, is there free will?
Both answers are meaningless. If we answer in the first case, we are saying that free will is manifested when we decide completely at random, throwing a coin. I do not think that this is what people believing in free will mean. If so, we must conclude that we go to heaven or hell by pure chance. But the second answer is even worse: in this case free will is to be determined by our own internal mental states! That is, it means the absence of free will!
Our idea of being free is correct, but it is just a way to say that we are ignorant on why we make choices.
Incomparibilist free will means independence from external circumstances, not internal ones.
I was trying to reconcile the fact that in a deterministic universe there could be life with free will, but I am going full circle now and am starting to think that everything is really random, if not I don't see how there could be free will in a deterministic universe.
If mathematicians measure randomness with probability, then there must be some things that have a 100% occurrence probability (in the current universe above atomic levels I presume), which now I see as special cases of randomness rather than opposites to randomness, and these lead us to think that there is determinism.
I think we may have this cognitive bias (deterministic views of reality) because it is extremely helpful to use these 100% probability occurrence things to model the universe rationally, learn, and to predict the future, but it is not the whole story or at least a complete description of reality.
What do you think?
EDIT 1: Thank you all for the comments below. I recognize I am naive in this topic.
Although I am not convinced yet, I think my possible argumentative error is:
P1: I observe free will in the behavior of living things.
P2: Deterministic physical mechanical processes don't permit free will.
C: Therefore physics must include random processes.
I think I only see a solution of free will in randomness, but maybe there are other solutions ( I will read the Free Will Sequence here on LW!)
EDIT 2: After reading some articles of the Free Will Sequence I realize the problem of investing energy around free will questions if free will is just a mistake in our thinking process.
It is something like why ask about time travel if time doesn't exist? or, why explore the mechanics of randomness vs determinism if randomness doesn't exist and thus the dichotomy "randomness vs determinism" doesn't exist in the first place?