[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps "independent" was a poor choice of words. Consider the following analogy. A gamer may control a video game character. Within the game, it appears as though the character has no free will and is completely determined by the the events of game world. However, the character's actions are actually controlled by a user who is independent of the rules of the game. He watches his monitor and listens to the speakers to receive input from the game world, and he controls his character so that he affects the game world, but he is not bound by the same rules that the character is.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a sloppy analogy because there is no "game world." There is a game loop (basically the program where the game processes are taking place - the graphic context is just an "arm" of that program). That game loop treats the buttons you press on the controller as inputs, and then translates those inputs into game terms.

In order for "free will" to exist in the real world, there would have to be a similar process. Something would have to translate inputs from the "otherworld" into physical responses in the brain. This process should be obvious on observation of certain brain patterns. Unfortunately, our ability to observe the brain is limited for now, so there remains the possibility of such a mechanism. But it's likely we'll overcome the limitations soon (within our lifetimes) and then either free will should be empirically obvious, or it will have nowhere to hide.

Regarding quantum mechanics... Certain quantum effects appear to be random - appear to be perfectly random, in fact. There are two points to recognize about this. First, probabilistic determinism is still determinism. Random events can't be predicted, but that's wholly irrelevant. That human actions may be random to some extent doesn't imply free will. But more important is the second point - because quantum randomness is empirically "truly" random (more random than the results of any pseudo-random number generator!), it's nonsensical for it to have patterned effects within the context of physics. Physicists have gone to great lengths to verify that there are no patterns in quantum randomness, so to suggest that quantum randomness (the only unexplained part of human functioning at the reductionistic level) has patterns when involved in decision-making is to suggest that somehow quantum physics starts to work completely differently when scientists aren't watching.

But it gets worse. Some people are unable to take a certain action if you disable a part of their brain. There are many sorts of odd situations in which affecting the brain affects basically every aspect of human functioning. Your idea of free will posits a "player" behind the scenes, interpreting independently from the brain. However, the ability to think, interpret, and decide changes depending on the state of the brain - this makes no sense if there really is an independent entity controlling the action.