Damon asked:

Is it possible to combine the ideas of free-will and determinism, by saying that you cannot have one
without the other?

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This is the approach taken by the view commonly called soft determinism. It has some attractive
features but, in my view, it ultimately fails because it collapses into what is known as hard
determinism. Perhaps the best defence of (his own particular version of) it that I have seen is Daniel
Dennett's "Elbow Room" — a very readable book (as is usual of Dennett's stuff) and quite persuasive.

Here's my version of the soft determinist argument. Free will requires that our choices are caused by
us and, further, that we make our choices for good reasons. If we merely make our choices randomly,
then we can escape determinism, but it seems that those choices are not really ours. However, good
reasons require a whole chain of reasoning — they cannot be arbitrary either. So our reasons are
caused by events that happen, the values we have, the thoughts that we have and so on. Indeed, for
our decisions to be ours, these warrants for our decisions must lead directly to those decisions —
they cannot leave it as a matter of luck. In other words, they should determine the choice — that is
the only way that the choice can be ours, and we can be said to have made it. Hence, our free will
requires that our choices are determined by our thoughts, values etc.

The reason that I think this account collapses into hard determinism (where our choices are
determined by events completely outside of us) is this. What is true of any particular choice, which
depends on other of our mental events (as well as events outside us), is also true of those precursor
reasons, thoughts, values etc. So, they themselves depend on former thoughts etc — and so on, until
eventually all the determinants of all our decisions are events outside ourselves. That is hard
determinism.

Tim Sprod