The Standard Argument has two parts.

First, it is claimed that determinism is the case, and thus the will is not free.
We call this the Determinism Objection.

Second, if real chance existed, we could not be responsible for random actions. We call this the Randomness Objection.

Together, these objections can be combined in the Responsibility Objection, namely that no Free Will model has yet provided us an intelligible account of the agent control needed for Moral Responsibility.

Both parts are logically and practically flawed, partly from abuse of language that led some philosophers to call free will a pseudo-problem, and partly from claims to knowledge that are based on faulty evidence. We shall show how to detect and correct errors in both the reasoning and the evidence.

Determinism is true. All events are caused. All our actions are therefore caused. There is no free will.

Errors and evidence...

• Determinism is not "true." Just consider part two of the standard argument below.

• Physical determinism is not "true" because physics is empirical, not logical. The evidence has never justified the assumption of determinism.

• Quantum mechanical indeterminism is extremely well established. While also not logically "true," the evidence for quantum mechanics is better established than classical physical determinism.

• Some events are unpredictable from prior events. They are causa sui, starting new causal chains.

• Our actions are caused by an adequately determined will.

• But our will can choose from free alternative possibilities that are creative and unpredictable.

• The will itself is indeed not "free (uncaused)," but we are free.

Chance exists. If our actions are caused by chance, we lack control. We can not call that free will because we could not be held morally responsible for random actions.

Errors and evidence...

• Randomness in some microscopic quantum events is indeed chance.

• But microscopic chance does little to affect adequate macroscopic determinism.

• Chance only generates alternative possibilities for thought and action.
  It is not the direct cause of actions.

• We are free, in control, and morally responsible for our choices and actions, because they are adequately determined.

Can you see the two standard objections and the flaws in reasoning or claims of truth that are based on faulty evidence? (These are modern examples of arguments at least as old as the Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics. See Cicero, for example.)

Ayer is extremely clear that the "truth" of determinism cannot be proved. He says that the determinist's

"belief that all human actions are subservient to causal laws still remains to be justified. If, indeed, it is necessary that every event should have a cause, then the rule must apply to human behaviour as much as to anything else. But why should it be supposed that every event must have a cause? The contrary is not unthinkable. Nor is the law of universal causation a necessary presupposition of scientific thought.

But nevertheless he states the standard argument succinctly:

But now we must ask how it is that I come to make my choice. Either it is an accident that I choose to act as I do or it is not. If it is an accident, then it is merely a matter of chance that I did not choose otherwise; and if it is merely a matter of chance that I did not choose otherwise, it is surely irrational to hold me morally responsible for choosing as I did. But if it is not an accident that I choose to do one thing rather than another, then presumably there is some causal explanation of my choice: and in that case we are led back to determinism.
(Philosophical Essays, 1954, p.275)

Smart states two definitions - one for determinism and one for randomness and declares them to be exhaustive of all possibilities.

Dl. I shall state the view that there is "unbroken causal continuity" in the universe as follows. It is in principle possible to make a sufficiently precise determination of the state of a sufficiently wide region of the universe at time to, and sufficient laws of nature are in principle ascertainable to enable a superhuman calculator to be able to predict any event occurring within that region at an already given time t'.

D2. I shall define the view that "pure chance" reigns to some extent within the universe as follows. There are some events that even a superhuman calculator could not predict, however precise his knowledge of however wide a region of the universe at some previous time.

For the believer in free will holds that no theory of a deterministic sort or of a pure chance sort will apply to everything in the universe: he must therefore envisage a theory of a type which is neither deterministic nor indeterministic in the senses of these words which I have specified by the two definitions DI and D2; and I shall argue that no such theory is possible.
("Free-Will, Praise and Blame," Mind, July 1961, reprinted in Dworkin, 1970)

...the notions of moral guilt, of blame, of moral responsibility are inherently confused and that we can see this to be so if we consider the consequences either of the truth of determinism or of its falsity. The holders of this opinion agree with the pessimists that these notions lack application if determinism is true, and add simply that they also lack it if determinism is false.
(Freedom and Resentment, 1962, reprinted in Watson (ed.), Free Will)

The metaphysical problem of human freedom might be summarized in the following way: "Human beings are responsible agents; but this fact appears to conflict with a deterministic view of human action (the view that every event that is involved in an act is caused by some other event); and it also appears to conflict with an indeterministic view of human action (the view that the act, or some event. that is essential to the act, is not caused at all)." To solve the problem, I believe, we must make somewhat far-reaching assumptions about the self of the agent — about the man who performs the act.
("Freedom and Action," in Freedom and Determinism, ed. Keith Lehrer, 1966, p.11)

Without free will, we seem diminished, merely the playthings of external forces. How, then, can we maintain an exalted view of ourselves? Determinism seems to undercut human dignity, it seems to undermine our value.

Some would deny what this question accepts as given, and save free will by denying determinism of (some) actions. Yet if an uncaused action is a random happening, then this no more comports with human value than does determinism. Random acts and caused acts alike seem to leave us not as the valuable originators of action but as an arena, a place where things happen, whether through earlier causes or spontaneously.
("Free Will", chapter 4 of Philosophical Explanations, 1981, p.291-2)

Here is an argument that I think is obvious (I don't mean it's obviously right; I mean it's one that should occur pretty quickly to any philosopher who asked himself what arguments could be found to support incompatibilism):

If determinism is true, then our acts are the consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it is not up to us what went on before we were born, and neither is it up to us what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of these things (including our present acts) are not up to us.

I shall call this argument the Consequence Argument.

[A variant argument van Inwagen called the Mind Argument] proceeds by identifying indeterminism with chance and by arguing that an act that occurs by chance, if an event that occurs by chance can be called an act, cannot be under the control of its alleged agent and hence cannot have been performed freely. Proponents of [this argument] conclude, therefore, that free will is not only compatible with determinism but entails determinism. (Essay on Free Will, 1983, p.16)

Strawson notes the argument is familiar and cites Henry Sidgwick's 1874 Methods of Ethics. Actually Sidgwick, with the 19th century view that freedom is metaphysical, is a firm determinist and only cites the Determinist Objection to free will.

It is a compelling objection. Surely we cannot be free agents, in the ordinary, strong, true-responsibility-entailing sense, if determinism is true and we and our actions are ultimately wholly determined by "causes anterior to [our] personal existence"* And surely we can no more be free if determinism is false and it is, ultimately, either wholly or partly a matter of chance or random outcome that we and our actions are as they are?

* H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, p. 66. This familiar objection to the claim that we can be truly responsible agents is of course disputed (and indeed scorned) by compatibilists, but it is entirely sufficient for establishing the structure of the present discussion. Cf. also An Essay on Free Will, by P. van Inwagen.

(Freedom and Belief, 1986, p.25)

The argument is exceedingly familiar, and runs as follows. Either determinism is true or it is not. If it is true, then all our chosen actions are uniquely necessitated by prior states of the world, just like every other event. But then it cannot be the case that we could have acted otherwise, since this would require a possibility determinism rules out. Once the initial conditions are set and the laws fixed, causality excludes genuine freedom.

On the other hand, if indeterminism is true, then, though things could have happened otherwise, it is not the case that we could have chosen otherwise, since a merely random event is no kind of free choice. That some events occur causelessly, or are not subject to law, or only to probabilistic law, is not sufficient for those events to be free choices.

Thus one horn of the dilemma represents choices as predetermined happenings in a predictable causal sequence, while the other construes them as inexplicable lurches to which the universe is randomly prone. Neither alternative supplies what the notion of free will requires, and no other alternative suggests itself. Therefore freedom is not possible in any kind of possible world. The concept contains the seeds of its own destruction.
(Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry, 1993, p.80)

...the well-known dilemma of determinism. One horn of this dilemma is the argument that if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done freely, and hence the agent is not responsible for it. The other horn is the argument that if the action was not caused, then it is inexplicable and random, and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent, and hence, again, the agent cannot be responsible for it. In other words, if our actions are caused, then we cannot he responsible for them; if they are not caused, we cannot be responsible for them. Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism, it is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility.
(Freedom and Moral Sentiment, 1995, p.14)

Let us now consider the libertarians, who claim that we have a capacity for indeterministically free action, and that we are thereby morally responsible. According to one libertarian view, what makes actions free is just their being constituted (partially) of indeterministic natural events. Lucretius, for example, maintains that actions are free just in virtue of being made up partially of random swerves in the downward paths of atoms. These swerves, and the actions they underlie, are random (at least) in the sense that they are not determined by any prior state of the universe.

If quantum theory is true, the position and momentum of micro-particles exhibit randomness in this same sense, and natural indeterminacy of this sort might also be conceived as the metaphysical foundation of indeterministically free action. But natural indeterminacies of these types cannot, by themselves, account for freedom of the sort required for moral responsibility.

As has often been pointed out, such random physical events are no more within our control than are causally determined physical events, and thus, we can no more be morally responsible for them than, in the indeterminist opinion, we can be for events that are causally determined. (Noûs 29, 1995, reprinted in Free Will, ed. D. Pereboom, 1997, p.252)

Accounts of free will purport to tell us what is required if we are to be free agents, individuals who, at least sometimes when we act, act freely. Libertarian accounts, of course, include a requirement of indeterminism of one sort or another somewhere in the processes leading to free actions. But while proponents of such views take determinism to preclude free will, indeterminism is widely held to be no more hospitable. An undetermined action, It is said would be random or arbitrary. It could not be rational or rationally explicable. The agent would lack control over her behavior. At best, indeterminism in the processes leading to our actions would be superfluous, adding nothing of value even if it did not detract from what we want.
(Libertarian Accounts of Free Will. Oxford, 2003, p. xiii)

If the truth of determinism would preclude free will, it is far from obvious how indeterminism would help.
Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, September 2008)

There are but these two alternatives. Either an action is causally determined. Or, to the extent that it is causally undetermined, its occurrence depends on chance. But chance alone does not constitute freedom. On its own, chance comes to nothing more than randomness. And one thing does seem to be clear. Randomness, the operation of mere chance, clearly excludes control.
(Free Will: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2004, p. 16)

There are three standard responses to the problem of free will. The first, known as 'hard determinism', accepts the incompatibility of free will and determinism ('incompatibilism'), and asserts determinism, thus rejecting free will. The second response is libertarianism (again, no relation to the political philosophy), which accepts incompatibilism, but denies that determinism is true. This may seem like a promising approach. After all, has not modern physics shown us that the universe is indeterministic? The problem here is that the sort of indeterminism afforded by modern physics is not the sort the libertarian needs or desires. If it turns out that your ordering soup is completely determined by the laws of physics, the state of the universe 10,000 years ago, and the outcomes of myriad subatomic coin flips, your appetizer is no more freely chosen than before. Indeed, it is randomly chosen, which is no help to the libertarian.
(Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B (2004) 359, 1775-1785)

The most straightforward way to attack the standard argument is to see that the three objections really need to become three requirements for free will.

First, there is a Determinism Requirement - that our actions be determined by our character and values. This requires that any randomness not be the direct cause of our actions. (Libertarians do not like this requirement.)

Next, there must be a Randomness Requirement, unpredictable chance events to break the causal chain of determinism that would make the causes of our actions simply the consequences of events in the remote past. (Determinists do not like this requirement.)

If we can meet these two requirements, we will satisfy the Responsibility Requirement.

We do this by showing

1. that the determinism we really have in the world is only adequate determinism and

2. that the randomness we have (especially quantum indeterminism) has negligible effect on that adequate determinism, but provides the alternative possibilities from which our determined will can choose, can make a selection.

See the Cogito model for the details and many lesser requirements.

Determinists and Compatibilists go wrong when they mistakenly assume that any chance or indeterminism will lead directly to random actions for which we cannot be morally responsible.

Though they are metaphysical determinists, they lack confidence in the personal determination of the will, guaranteed by the adequate physical determinism of our macroscopic minds. And as William James said, they have an "antipathy to chance."

Our adequately determined will gives us adequate control of microscopic chaos and chance.

Some of the compatibilists' fears of randomness are quite funny.

"Indeterminism does not confer freedom on us: I would feel that my freedom was impaired if I thought that a quantum mechanical trigger in my brain might cause me to leap into the garden and eat a slug." (J. J. C. Smart)

"For the simplest actions could not be performed in an indeterministic universe. If I decide, say, to eat a piece of fish, I cannot do so if the fish is liable to turn into a stone or to disintegrate in mid-air or to behave in any other utterly unpredictable manner." (P.H.Nowell-Smith)

Libertarians go wrong when they try to keep some (metaphysical) freedom (i.e., indeterminism) in the act of the determining will.

Their particular concern is that an agent might do exactly the same thing in exactly the same circumstances. The agent could not do otherwise.

Although this is not the pre-determination of the strict causal chain in metaphysical determinism, libertarians over-react. They have an "antipathy to determinism."

Despite advice from Daniel Dennett and Alfred Mele to keep indeterminism in the early pre-deliberation stages, libertarians like Robert Kane, Peter van Inwagen, and Laura Waddell Ekstrom want indeterminism in the decision. Kane calls it The Indeterminist Condition:

the agent should be able to act and act otherwise (choose different possible futures), given the same past circumstances and laws of nature. ( A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will, 2006, p.38)

But personal determination of the will is only acting consistently, in character and according to values expressed in one's habits and customs, when one does the same thing in the same circumstances. (Note that identical circumstances are essentially impossible, given the information of the past stored in the world and the agent's memory.)

An adequately determined will, given genuinely unpredictable alternative possibilities, many of which are generated within the agent's mind (thus "up to us"), gives us real choice and gives us control over chaos and chance.

The libertarians' fears of determinism are not quite as funny, but are equally misplaced.

Consider an agent whose act is, in such a sense, "libertarian free." Now a duplicate agent in exactly similar circumstances governed by the same natural laws and subject to the same occurrence of considerations at the same points in the deliberative process will form exactly the same judgment concerning the best thing to do and will act accordingly. But then, given the consideration pattern that occurs (but might not have), there is no "wiggle room" for the agent in forming an evaluative judgment — it simply falls out, of necessity, from the consideration pattern. Hence such an account does not leave sufficient room for free agency.
(Ekstrom, Free Will: A Philosophical Study, 2000, p.121)

Mike does not have complete control over what chance images and other thoughts enter his mind or influence his deliberation. They simply come as they please. Mike does have some control after the chance considerations have occurred. But then there is no more chance involved. What happens from then on, how he reacts, is determined by desires and beliefs he already has. So it appears that he does not have control in the libertarian sense of what happens after the chance considerations occur as well. Libertarians require more than this for full responsibility and free will. What they would need for free will is for the agent to be able to control which of the chance events occur rather than merely reacting to them in a determined way once they have occurred. (Kane, ibid., p.65)

The New Compatibilists are philosophers who mostly declare themselves to be agnostic on the "truth" of either determinism or indeterminism, and on question of the compatibilism of free will and determinism. Some are very interested in the independent possibility of the compatibilism of moral responsibility and determinism (or indeterminism).

It should only strengthen their hopes for moral responsibility - and the power of origination needed to make our own futures - if they would recognize what we can define as the
New Compatibilism of Determinism and Free Will:

The common sense idea of free will is compatible with the adequate physical determinism of the real world, and we can be responsible for the actions of our adequately determined will, because the will has adequate macroscopic control over microscopic randomness and chance. See our Cogito model.

Question 1. Can We Limit Determinism?

Do you believe that quantum mechanics has added indeterminism to the world, so that strict causal physical determinism is not "true?"

Question 2. Can We Limit Indeterminism?

If an Anti-Frankfurt Demon created some realistic options for your actions, and especially if some of the options were generated randomly, could you feel responsible for your de-liberate choice from among these possible actions?