Some people are quite obsessed by 'free will' (some people don't give a flying proverbial. If in this category, go to 'Back'.) Mostly, they're either religious or avidly interested in the science/philosophy boundary. This means there are not only small variations of opinion, but massive rifts in viewpoint amongst those who find this an interesting question.

I just thought I'd throw in my personal perspective and history. (A 'Free Will and Me' thing, you might say.)

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'm partly an Age of Enlightenment academic nutcase, and partly a hapless, lost-cause Romantic. Yes, that's one hell of a direct juxtaposition. But hey, I'm like that.

The Enlightenment attitude is basically about a highly reasoned approach to debate and decision. This isn't (necessarily) a cold, calculating philosophy by any means - it supported human rights movements, and opposed bloated institutionalization of human thought. There are many Enlightenment 'mavericks', taking inspiration largely from resentment about repressive societies, many of them religious and fascinated by attempts to resolve complex abstract issues into more concrete concepts. The spread of pantheism was one of the many outcomes of this - the view that God is not unearthly, but is rather synonymous with the world, or with the universe.

By contrast, the Romantic movement was an idealistic movement, largely borne by the visual arts, musical development and literature which are its home ground. Its sociological background is a combination of a reaction against the aristocratic class driving the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution's effects.  Its ideology is one of emotional attachment to nature, 'aesthetics' and folk culture - that is, it places great significance on natural beauty, most especially untamed, raw nature, as well as on the 'nobility' of folk art. It had the effect of driving many different religions' popularity up, despite its professed interest in overthrowing the dogmatic and orthodox - partly, this is because of the increasingly vulnerable classes who had dismissed religion in the light of Reason, but turned back to it as their positions became less comfortably bourgeois.

These two different movements, theoretically opposed, though sharing some attitudes (regarding human rights, for instance) and some proponents (Beethoven was attracted to both, lauding Romantic traits in his works, whilst supporting the Enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution), contain the seeds of much of Western view on free will.

Often, people think of one question when they consider free will: "Is everything we do pre-determined?", or "Is determinism correct?" This is, for many of the interested, at least the most important question to answer, if not the only one. It is, indeed, a fascinating subject, but also - far too often, in my opinion - a very technical one. To the Romantic, the many different incarnations of determinsm are of extreme interest - the movement is associated with forays into areas such as cultural determinism (which teaches that human actions are a consequence of their social upbringing) and environmental determinism (which teaches that culture itself is entirely a product of the physical surroundings of the society, rather than of social conditions and human innovativeness) since some Romantics were intrigued by the possibility of humans reaching a natural equilibrium with their surroundings, in the form of a 'folk' culture or a similar social structure and system of laws.

However, the two most obvious fundamental types of the philosophy are causal determinism and religious determinism (also 'theological' determinism).

The first is the proposition that the laws of nature allow only one course based on previous events (an elaboration of the concept that 'what goes up must come down', if you like). This scientific determinism is one which has a strong appeal to many people trained in logical thinking, for obvious reasons, although probabilistic effects in Quantum Mechanics are frequently cited as 'ways out' of this problem (QM proposes a system in which the state of nature is indeterminate, until some part of it is measured - however, this measurement will throw other aspects of the system into uncertainty - this uncertainty is a property of nature, NOT of the measurer or their apparatus). This viewpoint is clearly important to Enlightenment philosophy's insistence on logic and reason.

The latter proposition is that there is a powerful being - a God - who is either determining all events for himself, or who is omniscient (that is, a God who can 'see' what is going to happen ahead of time). The first of these positions pretty much excludes all other questions of free will, as I view it (although definitions of free will are available to skirt this problem); the second is strongly analogous to causal determinism (since causal determinism indicates that it is possible for a being to know what will happen next).

However, there is at least one other question of extreme relevance to the free will debate - this falls under the category of "compatability". The compatabilist position is that free will is perfectly possible in a deterministic world, whilst incompatabilism states that they are irreconcilable.

For many, incompatabilism is the most logically obvious viewpoint ("How can you have free will if someone knows what you're going to do?"). There are three important subdivisions of incompababilists: firstly, Libertarianism teaches determinism is wrong, and that we do indeed have free will - the most widespread assumption. Secondly, 'hard' determinism states that determinism is correct, and that all we have is the illusion of free will - the obvious alternative, historically common amongst scientists. Finally, pessimistic incompatabilism preaches that although determinism is (or might be) incorrect, free will is still illusory - this often challenges our definition of free will.

However, compatabilitism's challenge of our conpect of free will is - for me - a much more fascinating question, independently of my belief in determinism. It has a long history (back to the Greek school of Stoicism, who had, interestingly, a very Romantic view about harmony with nature involving 'prohairesis'), and has always attracted very interesting and clever philosophers, not least of whom the currently very active Daniel C. Dennett, who is my favourite modern philosopher.

The position of the compatabilist (who does not necessarily believe in determinism - if they do, they are 'soft' determinists) is that determining whether an action is an expression of free will is not about whether or not the result is predictable. Actually, this is not a very outlandish claim, despite the initial resistance to the conclusion of the argument - free will, surely, is an internal phenomenon, not an external one, and anyway, so what if your decision is predictable? For most of us, free will is about making a choice 'for ourselves'.

My personal interpretation of this is that we should consider carefully the origins of our choices. At the end of the day, in the argument against causal determinism, what is important is that the sequence of thoughts and analyses which we make - independently, even spontaneously (to use a heavily loaded word) - is determined (principally, and to the near exclusion of all else) by how our 'minds' (leaving aside the whole mind-soul-brain-body issue for another time) 'think' (leaving aside the issue of what thought is too) - phew! That's a lot of brackets.

But ultimately, what this boils down to is this: there is nothing in causal determinism that stops me from saying that my mind reaches the same decision it would without determinism. The environment of the mind clearly influences the thought process (causal or not) - when we are angry, we make harsh decisions, but when we are happy, we make generous decisions, and when we are 17 year old college students in South West Wales having spent our lives in the British education system, brought up by my parents, and having had my experiences, we make decisions consistent with what I like to call 'me'. This argument doesn't work as is for higher-level forms of determinism (most intriguingly cultural determinism), but for general causal purposes clearly shows how we can interpret our actions (human 'agency' in philosophy) as voluntary, and as moderated by what we identify as the 'self' - or more specifically, the mind.

For those of you interested in more - and better! - writing, Dennett has a subtle twist of compatabilism which he assembles over a set of books, bringing several ideas together in Freedom Evolves (Elbow Room is his perhaps more focused work devoted to assessing the behavioural of free will). He argues that the abilities we have evolved allow us 'evitability' - the ability of an entity to (try to) make events follow a chain leading to beneficial consequences, whilst avoiding unwanted situations.

One of the main reasons I consider this important is its role in repudiating particular incarnations of fatalism and defeatism. Popular culture (particularly the sci-fi and fantasy genres) is full of characters who exhibit what I consider repulsive and highly destructive behaviour - the tendency to assume that life is all about either finding ways around, or struggling against, events which they 'know' are pre-destined. Somehow, people move from a clear-thinking analysis of a situation to a type desperation which is psychologically detrimental, and worse, contagious.

Similarly, people routinely seem to step without hesitation from seemingly reasoned arguments to conclusions about ethics which are totally off the wall - most commonly, the (as it were) 'moral determinism' which swiftly apportion blame and hence responsibility for one's actions on events (or even people) in one's history. There are some brilliant fallacies there.

Anyway, that's all we have space for folks. :)

[ PS:  Check out this hilarious post about Obama! ]