The debate between free will and determinism stems from the apparent conflict between the universal rule of causality found in nature and the apparent ability of men to choose between multiple courses of action in order to lead to the most desirable outcome. Inorganic matter such as chairs, stones, and planets, blindly follows whatever forces affects it, and non-human organisms act for their survival alone, but human beings seem to be an exception to natures rule by their unique ability to ponder about how to go about their life and which values to live by.
Determinists reject the idea that any of these choices are freely chosen however, and claim that a man is no exception to natures law because he and his choices are nothing more than the product of his environment. Decisions, they usually claim, are simply a product of conflicting environmental influences duking it out. A proper understanding of the nature of volition however, can reconcile the apparent conflict between free will and causality, and soundly reject the position that man is merely a product of his environment.
Determinists claim that the nature of the universe is such that it is governed by certain universal scientific laws, so that each action is caused by a specific prior cause, and human action is no exception. They claim that the human mind is also governed by these rules so that no alternative course of action is possible to humans other than the specific and unique set of prior factors that caused that human action to be made. Thus, human choices are not free because they are determined ahead of time by whatever environmental, social, genetic, biological and any other unknown factors caused such choices to be made.
Accordingly, men cannot be held morally responsible for their actions, since they have no more control over the causal chain of events in reality than anyone else. The determinist would say that whether the human mind operates by random firing of neurons or strict logic is irrelevant: both are governed by specific prior causes, and even if science could show that human choices were caused by random firing of neurons, the choice would not be free because it would not be chosen, independent of prior factors.
To the determinist, free will would not be possible under any condition: if it was caused by prior causes, all choice would follow the strict laws of causation, and if it was independent of any prior causes it would have to be random, and hence not chosen in any meaningful way. The classic reply in favor of free will to adopt some sort of indeterminism: to claim that free will involves some sort of exception from the rules of causation. Traditionally, God has played this role, providing some sort of mystical staging ground, exempt from causality, that allowed choice to occur.
Rene Descartes took a similar position by arguing that that the mind exists on a separate plane from the body, and more recently, quantum physics and chaos theory have provides scientific excuses to escape causation and allow a possible for free choice to occur. Both of these notions are nonsense. If a human choice is independent from any prior factors grounded in reality then it must be random, and randomness is in no way a choice. A man who acts randomly is mad, not free. Whether God or quantum physics is the excuse, it is not viable to claim that human choice is independent of prior cause, and yet not completely random.
The self-determinist position rejects both of these views. Affirming free will does not involve a rejection of causality in favor of a magical mechanism for human choice, but an affirmation of the process of volition that is the process behind all human choice. The self-determinist position rejects both the notion that any supernatural forces are involved or that human decisions violate or are independent of whatever laws, known and as yet unknown govern the workings of the universe.
No alternative world where different choices were made is possible because the brain itself is not excused from the same rules that govern all other matter. Rather, free will as I see it refers to the uniquely human process of volition that allows multiple courses of actions to be considered and evaluated and one selected. Hence, the process of volition does not involve a separate realm of uncaused thought and decisions, but the specific process of human thought and decision-making.
Free will is free in the sense that the human mind has the ability to consider multiple decisions and choose particular outcomes. In reality, only one choice and only one decision is actually made the hardware of the brain allows no uncaused, truly random or causeless factors to enter the process but from the perspective of the person making a decision, multiple decisions are possible, and multiple outcomes are considered. It might be said that the process I have just described is really just an illusion of free will since in actuality only one decision was actual after the consideration.
However the term free will does not refer to either uncaused or random actions (for then it becomes useless) but to our ability to evaluate multiple courses of actions, consider different outcomes, and then select the action most likely to leave the world in a more desirable state than if we had selected a different action or none at all. While we do not yet understand the specific physical process by which we make decisions, the evidence of our own ability to choose between multiple outcomes is readily evident by introspection.
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