Indeterminism Is Not Randomness

A common argument against free will is that 
RAN1) The universe is strictly determined;
a particular state-of-affairs having occured at time T1, 
another must inevitably follow at time T2.

A common counter-argument is 

RAN2) that the universe is not in fact 
deterministic, but is indeterministic -- a fact scientifically proved
by Bell's Theorem and the Aspect experiment....

and the standard rebuttal to *that* argument is that:

RAN3) 'indeterministic' means 'random'.
RAN4) randomness is incompatible with any kind of free-will worth having.

I have no quibble with (RAN2) and (RAN4). This article will deal with (RAN3).

Is indeterminism a *fact ? Is randomness a *fact* ?

Let us consider the second question first. Can randomness be a
fact? You prove that something is non-random by showing that it follows
some (known) pattern. So how do  you show that something is non-random.
Well, you can showthat it follows no *known* pattern, by trying out
all *known* pattern, and seeing that it does not follow any of them.
Which proves it is random....right ? Wrong, because folowing no
*known* pattern is not the same as following no pattern at all,
and only following no pattern at all is precisely the same as being random.
(There is of course a trivial sense in which any set of data follows
a pattern -- the pattern which is idntical to the data set itself.
The non-trivial sense of following a pattern is what is technically
called redundancy in information science).
Since we do not have every possible pattern available to us to test against,
there is no way we can prove scientifically that something is random, 
ie patternless. That is why there is a determistic case against the standard
version of quantum mechanics, with its assumption of intrinsic randomness.
So intrinsic randomness is not necesarily true, even given the experimental
evidence for indeterminism. That intrinsic randomness is not necessarily true
does not logically entail that  determinism is necessarily true. Moreover, 
determinism, or a  form of determinism, namely local determinism, is known
experimentally to be false. Indeterminism is therefore a fact, but not a fact
equivalent to a the existence of intrinsic randomness, which is not and cannot
be a empirical fact.

Peter D. Jones 5/2/02