is there free will?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Actually, I made a naughty rhetorical flounce and you caught me . However, if one admits that everyone here actually believes they have free will (otherwise why are the determinists arguing with me, regardless of whether their belief is determined they clearly believe they can argue with me.) then that begs the question of why we should think the world is deterministic. Cause and Effect does work, broadly speaking, but it's not reliable.

Increasingly we find that answers beget more questions, formulae end in curves rather than finite results.....

there's clearly something fishy going on.

You keep starting with the assumption that having free will must mean that determinism is false...

Consider:

1) Unless there are special circumstances, people should be held morally responsible for their actions
2) If you can't reasonably foresee the consequences of your action, that would be one such special circumstance (e.g. if I pat you on the back and you die, I should not be called a murderer)
3) In order for you to be able to reasonably foresee the consequences of your action, the world can't be random, it needs to be causally determined

Therefore: Moral responsibility requires causal determinism.

I just don't get why you are intent on dismissing determinism

The more random the world is, the less you can hold people responsible for their actions. If my choices are random, I'm not choosing them.

*****

Our actions being causally determined is no reason to say we don't have free will. Generally the argument goes something like

1) determinism means that under circumstances X, you must do A
2) if you must do A, you have no choice in doing A

Therefore: if determinism is true we have no free will

When really it should go

1) determinism says that under circumstances X, what will happen is that you will do A
2) if you must do A, you have no choice in doing A

Therefore: under circumstances X, you will do A (premise 2 is irrelevant)

So cause and effect doesn't force us to make the choices we will make, it simply describes the choices we will make. For comparison take Greshem's law:

[Gresham's Law is] the theory holding that if two kinds of money in circulation have the same denominational value but different intrinsic values, the money with higher intrinsic value will be hoarded and eventually driven out of circulation by the money with lesser intrinsic value.

So when a government starts printing money like bad, people will hoard gold. Do they do so because of Greshem's law? No. Greshem's law simply describes what people do in that situation.