Indetermined Free Will

An argument for libertarian (or "true") free will

I've covered free will for a handful of times already and I've made clear that my position is that of compatibilism - free will is compatible and is even based on determinism - to be free is to act according to what I want, and what I want depends on what I am.

However, I think there's a third option besides determined and random, which are usually the only two considered options regarding what happens in the world. We usually either consider that an event was determined by a previous one - "caused" by it, or that an event is purely stochastic - random. None of these work for "true free will" of the libertarian kind, one where your choice doesn't depend on what happened previously and is not random, either.

The third possibility is one that I will call "indetermined". In other words, it is one which starts a new causal chain without having a prior cause. It can be informed by prior information (for example, that I like chocolate and dislike vanilla, therefore I'm choosing chocolate ice cream) but it's not determined by that. There is freedom available to me to reject that chain of reasoning and simply choose vanilla ice cream just to show that I'm free to do it.

Where else can we see something like this, to get a better grip on what I mean? 

One option is quantum mechanics. For example, the decay of a radioactive particle is a quantum event that is not "caused" by anything. It simply happens. The emission of a photon by an excited electron that then drops to a lower orbital is another example.

A second option is a brute fact. Take, for example, the existence of the Universe. Some people say there is no "reason for" why the Universe exists - it's a "brute fact". It simply is like that. But this opens up Pandora's box of brute facts. I can use the same argument for free will - whenever we make a decision, we can call that "a brute fact" - there is no "reason for" why I made that decision.

This may look dubious to you and I admit it does to me, too. But I won't reject this out of hand. I think it's a coherent position to have, albeit a bit weird. If we assume that agents truly exist and consciousness is fundamental, then when I make a decision, that can look to you as a certain set of physical facts. For example, it will look like certain neurotransmitter vesicles being released in my synapses and certain ion channels opening in my neurons and so on - all of them consistent with what my choice comes out to be in my interaction with the rest of the world. 

From your point of view this will all look "random" - you can always make an argument that I could have done otherwise, since other classical outcomes were possible as far as you're concerned. But that's only because you can only know me stochastically - you can only predict me probabilistically. That's the limit of your epistemic access to me. 

I think this is a consistent third way to look at free will - a decision is truly free and not determined by any prior physical events and it will appear as a certain classical outcome to anybody observing it. It's a "brute fact" start of a new causal chain which can then be observed physically.