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Originally Posted by Michael Chui 
Determinism is the philosophy that the future is determinable. More clearly, that it is possible to determine what the future holds based on events of the past.
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Well, based on an exhaustive knowledge of the present state of the Universe I would imagine. But in what sense does the present state of the Universe inevitably lead to a specific future state? Does determinism view physical laws as
governing reality rather than merely describing reality? And what about free will? Such a definition of free will is clearly not logically incompatible with this definition of determinism, and yet people tend to think they are logically incompatible.
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According to Wikipedia, there are two types of determinists: those who believe that free will is incompatible with determinism, and those who believe it isn't. I am of the latter camp. To quote from Wikipedia,
"The compatibilist definition of free will states that free will is not the ability to choose as an agent independent of prior cause, but as an agent who is not forced to make a certain choice."
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Presumably it doesn't just mean prior
physical causes but mental causes too. But then we have the problem of defining what exactly a mental cause is and what is meant by saying we behave due to mental causes or alternatively that we behave due to no causes at all, either physical or mental.
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Alternatively, InJoy's position is remarkably similar to what Wikipedia calls Libertarian:
"Libertarianism suggests that we actually do have free will, that it is incompatible with determinism, and that therefore the future is not determined."
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{shrugs} I think that this whole subject is extremely confused. What I'm interested in are the people who deny the existence of mental causal powers. That's the issue that should be addressed before discussing "free will". It seems to me that materialists, and more generally those who believe that mental events simply follow physical events in the brain, are unable to believe in mental causation.