Why have philosophers been unable for millenia to see that the common sense view of human freedom is correct? Partly because their logic or language preoccupation makes them say that either determinism or indeterminism is true, and the other must be false. Our physical world includes both, although the determinism we have is only an adequate description for large objects. So any intelligible explanation for free will must include both indeterminism and adequate determinism.

Imagine a Micro Mind with a randomly assembled "agenda" of possible things to say or to do. These are drawn from our memory of past thoughts and actions, but randomly varied by unpredictable negations, associations of a part of one idea with a part or all of another, and by substitutions of words, images, feelings, and actions drawn from our experience. In information communication terms, there is cross-talk and noise in our neural circuitry.

In a "content-addressable" information model, memories are stored based on their content - typically bundles of simultaneous images, sounds, smells, feelings, etc. So a new experience is likely to be stored in neural pathways alongside closely related past experiences. And a fresh experience, or active thinking about an experience that presents a decision problem, is likely to activate nearby brain circuits, ones that have strong associations with our current circumstances. These are likely to begin firing randomly, to provide unpredictable raw material for actionable possibilities.

The strong feeling that sometimes "we don't know what we think until we hear what we say" reflects our capability for original and creative thoughts, different from anything we have consciously learned. Something as simple as substituting a synonymous word, or more complex replacements with associated words (metonyms) or wild leaps of fancy (metaphor) are examples of building unpredictable thoughts. Picturing ourselves doing something we have seen others do, from "monkey see, monkey do" childhood mimicry to adult imitations, is a source for action items on the agenda, with the random element as simple as if and when we choose to do them.

The etymology of cogito is Latin co-agitare, to shake together. Why do we need quantum uncertainty involved in the shaking together of our agenda items? Will neuroscientists ever find information structures in the brain to generate our random agenda, structures small enough to be susceptible to microscopic quantum phenomena? Some fanciful mechanisms include a random number generator like those in computer programs. Others imagine a microscopic event like the nuclear decay in Schrödinger's diabolical thought experiment with a cat, plus the amplifier circuitry needed to magnify the event to the macroscopic level.

But nothing physically localized is likely to be found. The randomness of the Micro Mind is simply the result of ever-present noise, both thermal and quantum noise, that is inherent in any information storage and communication system.

Constant, ever-present noise removes an important technical objection. When and where and how would the random event occur?, said critics of the Epicurean swerve of the atoms. The Cogito model randomly generates contextually appropriate alternative possibilities at all times.

The Cogito model is not a mechanism. It is a process.

Quantum uncertainty adds a "causa sui," an uncaused or self-caused cause, in the causal chain. But it need not directly determine the decision of the macroscopic will or the fully determined resulting action which is consistent with character and values.

Some argue that brain structures are too large to be affected at all by quantum events. But there is little doubt that the brain has evolved to the point where it can access quantum phenomena. The evolutionary advantage for the mind is freedom and creativity. Biophysics tells us the eye can detect a single quantum of light (photon), and the nose can smell a single molecule.

If the Micro Mind is a random generator of frequently outlandish and absurd possibilities, the complementary Macro Mind is a macroscopic structure so large that quantum effects are negligible. It is the critical apparatus that makes decisions based on our character and values.

Information about our character and values is probably stored in the same noise-susceptible neural circuits of our brain, in our memory, so Macro Mind and Micro Mind are not necessarily in different locations in the brain. Instead, they are probably the consequence of different information processing methods. The Macro Mind must suppress the noise when it makes an adequately determined decision.

The Macro Mind has very likely evolved to add enough redundancy, perhaps even error detection and correction, to reduce the noise to levels required for an adequate determinism. Our decisions are then in principle predictable, given knowledge of all our past actions and given the randomly generated possibilities in the instant before decision. However, only we know the contents of our minds, and they exist only within our minds. Thus we can feel fully responsible for our choices, morally and legally.

The Cogito model accounts not just for freedom but for creativity, original thoughts and ideas never before expressed. Unique and new information comes into the world with each new thought and action.

Biologists will note that the Micro Mind corresponds to random variation in the gene pool (often the direct result of quantum accidents). The Macro Mind corresponds to natural selection by highly determined organisms. See the biology chapter for other examples of random generation followed by adequately determined selection, like the immune system and protein/enzyme factories. Karl Popper may have been the first to point this out.

Psychologists will see the resemblance of Micro Mind and Macro Mind to the Freudian id and super-ego (das Ess und das Über-ich).

The model accounts quantitatively for the concept of wisdom. The greater the amount of knowledge and experience, the more likely that the random agenda will contain more useful and "intelligent" thoughts and actions as alternative possibilities. It also implies that an educated mind is "more free" because it can generate a wider agenda and options for action. It suggests that "narrow" and "closed" minds may simply be lacking the capabilities of the Micro Mind. And if the Macro Mind were weak, it might point to the high correlation between creativity and madness suggested by a Micro Mind out of control.

Philosophers of Mind, whether hard determinist or compatibilist, should recognize this Macro Mind as everything they say is needed to make a carefully reasoned free choice. But now choices include self-generated random possibilities for thought and action that no external agent can predict. Thus the choice of the will and the resulting willed action are unpredictable. The origin of the chosen causal chain is entirely within the agent, a condition noted first by Aristotle for voluntary action, his ἐν ἡμῖν ("in us").

The combination of microscopic randomness and macroscopic determinism in our Cogito model for human freedom means it is both unpredictable and yet fully responsible for its willed actions. Chance never leads directly to - never directly "causes" - an action.

Chance only provides the variety of alternative possibilities, each the possible start of a new causal chain, from which the deterministic judgment can choose an alternative that is consistent with its character and values. Our will is adequately determined and in control of our actions.

In summary, we distinguish six increasingly sophisticated ideas about the role of chance and indeterminism in the question of free will. Many libertarians have accepted the first two. Determinist and compatibilist critics of free will make the third their central attack on chance. But very few thinkers appear to have considered all six essential requirements for chance to contribute to our Cogito model of libertarian free will, specifically the last three requirements - that chance must be present but suppressible at will.

1. Chance exists in the universe. Quantum mechanics is correct. Indeterminism is true, etc.

2. Chance is important for free will. It breaks the causal chain of determinism.

3. Chance cannot directly cause our actions. We cannot be responsible for random actions.

4. Chance can only generate random (unpredictable) alternative possibilities for action or thought. The choice or selection of one action must be adequately determined, so that we can take responsibility. And once we choose, the connection between mind/brain and motor control must be adequately determined to see that "our will be done."

5. Chance, in the form of noise, both quantum and thermal, must be ever present. The naive model of a single random microscopic event, amplified to affect the macroscopic brain, never made sense. Under what ad hoc circumstances, at what time, at what place in the brain, could it occur to affect a decision? And if chance did affect the decision, we would not be in control, we could not take responsibility.

6. Chance must be overcome or suppressed by the adequately determined will when it decides to act, de-liberating the prior free options that "one could have done."

In our Cogito model, "Free Will" combines two distinct concepts. Free is the chance and randomness of the Micro Mind. Will is the adequately determined choice of the Macro Mind. And these occur in a temporal sequence.

If the chance suggestions appear first in the theater of consciousness (though they are largely unconscious and competing for attention) the more conscious choice and potential veto of the choice by the frontal lobe could account for the Libet delay.

First comes the consideration of alternative possibilities, which are generated unpredictably by acausal events (simply noise in neural network communications). This free creation of possible thoughts and actions allows one to feel "I can do otherwise."

Next comes de-liberation and determination by the will, the unfreeing of possibilities into actuality, the decision that directs the tongue or body to speak or act.

After the deliberation of the will, the true sentence "I can do otherwise" can be changed to the past tense and remain true as a "hard fact" in the "fixed past," and written "I could have done otherwise."

Thus we have the temporal sequence which William James saw so clearly a century ago, with chance in a present time of random alternatives, leading to a choice which grants consent to one possibility and transforms an equivocal future into an unalterable and simple past.

Free undetermined alternatives are followed by willed, determined choices. As John Locke knew more than three hundred years ago, "free" is an adjective that describes not the will, but the human mind.