Freewill.
First off, whether or not we have "freewill" is independent upon whether
 determinism is true or false.  Another subject that freewill debates seem to
 move onto, fueled by arguments over determinism, is duality vs. materialism.
 This subject is also irrelevant to to the question of freewill AND to the
 question of determinism.
"Free" is the quality of not being bound, restrained, or controlled.
My personal take on this definition is that not being restrained _against
 _one's_will_or_intent_ is implied, because if there is no intention to
 oppose a would-be restraint then the restraint is nothing but an
 unactualized potential; nonconsequential; meaningless; irrelevant.  Now
 obviously determinism does not cause one to will to will something other
 than what he wills.  The fundamental laws of cause and effect to which
 randomness doesn't apply (or 'absolute chance' does--more on that later)
 apply to a scale far removed from that of the abstract laws of cause and
 consequence that our will takes into account in its decision-making process.
 Since we do not consciously take into account the causes of our decisions
 on the scale at which determinism applies, determination, or determinism,
 does not cause us to will to will something that we don't will.  Hence, our
 will is practically boundless, there being no intention to direct it against
 any potential boundaries; instead, it's the fundamental laws that supposedly
 bound will that will is itself made of.  Will is a phenomenon--a process--of
 those same laws; not an opponent of them.  This makes will "free" by the
 most intuitive definition of the word.  
If, on the other hand, not being bound or restrained is taken to mean not
 being limited to one possibility of action, then all I have to say is this:
 What is truly possible, is.  There are no unactualized possibilities from
 which to be bound or restrained on the scale of causality to which
 determinism applies.  Assuming, for the moment, that determinism is true,
 any action that defies the most fundamental laws of the universe would
 introduce some kind of contradiction, and contradictions only exist in the
 mind; hence, the possibility of will defying causality only exists in the
 mind, so therefore any restraint preventing this possibility also
 exists in the mind.  Because the restraint is not physical and determism is
 really more of a physical theory than a psychological one, its significance
 should not be transcended into the realm of will, or of freedom in any sense
 that has a bearing on morality or a on a feeling of being helplessly
 controlled.  Now, one might say that the existence of these absolute laws
 in the first place is what imposes the restraint against the possibility of
 actions defying these laws--since without the physical laws defying them
 would not introduce a contradiction.  If someone were to say that, I would
 (hmm, maybe i should have made this a dialogue) say that, if there were any
 possibility of a law not existing, it wouldn't, as its existence would be
 contradictory.  One might then say: to what?  Then I'd say: To the other
 laws.  And then one might say: What if none of them existed?  To which I'd
 say: If they didn't, you'd never know it because you couldn't exist as you
 are.  With nothing but absolute chance there is nothing to retain your
 conscious form.  Since you could not exist in or perceive such a
 hypothetical universe, its possibility is irrelevant.
So now we're left with the consideration of some element of "absolute chance"
 existing alongside cause and effect (presuming that the laws of physics
 leave an open hole for this possibility, i.e. quantum physics (though i
 don't personally support the notion)).  This is equally irrelevant to
 freewill.  Whether an action arises by absolute chance or as a result of
 a previous action, or a combination of both, it is still but ONE outcome.
 The only difference in this case is that, instead of the outcome being
 "bound" to one possibility by cause and effect, it is bound to the 
 possibility by the whim of absolute chance.  With respect to freewill,
 it might as well be determined.  Would a person rather be "controlled" by
 the orderly laws of cause and effect, or by the whim of absolute chance?
 Does it really make a difference?  If anything, I would rather be bound by
 the laws of cause and effect only, because this provides a more solid mode
 by which to know that any given choice I make is based on rational processes
 considering the important factors and arriving at a sane conclusion, rather
 than being partially based on the whim of the almighty intervening
 unreasonable-by-definition dictator called absolute chance (i.e. God
 throwing dice).
Here, I have appealed directly to the aesthetic implications of worrying
 about whether determinism is true or false in regards to free will (which
 should have already been abolished by the notion that determinism applies on
 a different level than that of feeling hopelessly controlled), but the alert
 reader would notice that my logic of why "restraint" is meaningless in a
 deterministic sense doesn't apply to a hybrid determination/absolute-chance
 modal and thus freewill may still be dependent upon absolute chance.  It is
 interesting, if not ironic, to note that, if freewill _is_ dependent upon
 whether or not some absolute chance exists, then the existence of some
 absolute chance would show freewill _not_ to be true.  Absolute chance opens
 up the possibility of non-self-contradictory alternate histories, which
 provides a palatable choice from which to be restrained by absolute chance
 which selects one, and only one, possibility from the many.  However it
 would be my argument that, regardless of whether an outcome is determined,
 any proposition about the future is either true or false.  Once the outcome
 is selected by cause and/or absolute chance, it _is_ the only possibility.
 At that instance, any would-be restraint against that possibility is
 meaninglessly impotent.  Before that instance, there is no will or other
 kind of force that can actively oppose the absolute-chance component of
 the result because by definition absolute chance precludes cause.  Hence
 any restraint against, or bounding of, such nonexistent opposition is also
 nonexistent, thus yielding freedom, again.
Now there is one turn left unstoned: the antithesis to the assumption that,
 for every time frame in which a multitude of possibilities is left open by
 an absolute chance function, one and only one possibility is selected, i.e.
 actualized, from the many; in other words, the Many Worlds theory.  But I
 don't feel like thinking about it so I'll leave that up to the reader.
 
There are a few subjects I mentioned but didn't have a need to elaborate on
 in the above.
One is the notion that determinism and freewill are independent of the
 subject of dualism vs. materialism.
Basically, either something has a cause, or it doesn't.  The only logical
 alternative to causality is absolute chance.  If there is absolute chance,
 then determinism is false.  Even if our actions are influenced by some
 transcendental spirit-world, the part of will that is spiritual must
 ultimately be a result of processes either involving absolute chance, or
 being deterministic.  The notion of the soul doesn't necessarily save one
 from determinism: one can assume that metaphysical/spiritual processes are
 determined just as easily as one can material processes.  If, on the other
 hand, one contends that the immaterial is so ineffable that the law of
 excluded middle doesn't apply, then one should also concede that it is
 meaningless to think of the metaphysical except in terms of how it affects
 the physical--in which case it must boil down to a phenomenon of absolute
 chance, since any sort of cause for those physical actions as influenced by
 the immaterial is also ineffable.  This doesn't indicate any kind of
 dependence of determinism on duality vs. materialism, though, because indeed
 if the immaterial is thought to be ineffable and affecting the material then
 there is no functional difference between that logic and the plain
 assumption that material processes involve absolute chance.
Another subject is the feasibility of absolute chance itself.  The idea is
 absurd; a paradoxical counter to determinism emotionally inspired by a
 shortsighting that causes people to feel like they have no free will if 
 causality is absolute.  Unfortunately I have no idea how to prove that
 absolute chance is paradoxical at this time; it's just intuitive.  Some
 would contend that quantum mechanics is the window for absolute chance to
 take effect, but my intuition strongly accords with Einstein's: "God" does
 not throw dice.  However, my opinion differs from Einstein's in that I no
 longer attribute the illusion of absolute chance to a hidden variable.
 Rather I believe it is caused by a misunderstanding of quantum physics
 itself.  I was very pleased to read Steven Hawking's suggestion in 'A Brief
 History of Time':
  "We now know that Laplace's hopes of determinism cannot be realized, at
   least in the terms he had in mind.  The uncertainty principle of
   quantum mechanics implies that certain pairs of quantities, such as
   the position and velocity of a particle, cannot both be predicted with
   complete accuracy.  Quantum mechanics deals with this situation via a
   class of quantum theories in which particles don't have well-defined
   positions and velocities but are represented by a wave.  These quantum
   theories are deterministic in the sense that they give us laws for the
   evolution of the wave with time.  Thus if one knows the wave at one
   time, one can calculate it at any other time.  The unpredictable,
   random element comes in only when we try to interpret the wave in
   terms of the positions and velocities of particles.  But maybe that is
   our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but
   only waves.  It is just that we try to fit these waves into our
   preconceived ideas of positions and velocities.  The resulting
   mismatch is the cause of apparent unpredictability."  
Last but not least, the problem of freewill (as considered dependent upon
 determinism) is commonly associated with questions of moral responsibility,
 and I find this to be ridiculously stupid, well above the ambient level of
 stupidity that I've grown used to.  Some of the reasons for this are given 
 above without mentioning of the moral implications.
Ultimately, you are "controlled" by either absolute chance or causality
 (nature + nurture).  This is true whether or not you have a soul.  If you
 have an immaterial soul that plays a part in your decisions, then ultimately
 that part is either played by the nature&nurture of your soul, or by
 absolute chance (over which you have less control than anything else).  If a
 person does something bad because of either or both of these "controlling"
 forces in either the soul, the brain, or both, then is it really his fault?
 Of course it is.  Else whose fault would it be?  Nobody's?  If so, then
 nothing is really anyone's fault, ever.  In reality, whether something is
 somebody's "fault", i.e. whether somebody "deserves" punishment, in any
 circumstance is arbitrary, because ultimately everything is a result of
 causal and/or absolute-chance events.  Responsibility and morality are
 matters of the will; not matters of the forces "controlling" the will. These
 "controlling" entities don't affect us as such; determinism is irrelevant.
 So, when is someone responsible for his actions?  When whomever you
 ask--be it you, society, or the persin in question--deems him to be.  When
 _should_ a person be considered responsible for something?  When that
 person has conscious control over it.  Neither causality nor absolute chance
 prevents someone from having conscious control over things, because these
 are considerations of fundamental forces that constituate the process of
 consciousness--including its intentions, and its macroscopic interaction
 with its environment--rather than oppose them.  We have free will because we
 logically can never _know_ of all of these supposed fundamental vectors of
 causality and thereby predetermine our own choices.  Some say that this
 means freewill is only an illusion; but since freewill is just a state of
 mind anyway, it is not but what it appears to be.  The fact that we can't
 predict our own choice means that we cannot wish helplessly to make another
 choice yet be bound to the original choice by determinism (and absolute
 chance?) and we therefore have the quality of not being bound with respect
 to the process of will, thus giving us freewill.  And it's not like this
 would be different if we simply knew more, because it's a logical
 impossibility rather than a mere practical one.  A cognitive system cannot
 completely catalogue its entire cognitive state.  It would be infinitely
 recursive, and it takes more bandwidth to understand a given part than
 than that part conduces.  There are, of course, macroscopic external and
 psychological factors limiting one's conscious control over things, and
 those are what determine whether someone should be responsible for
 something.
Assuming responsibility goes hand-in-hand with the possibility of being "at
 fault", i.e. to blame, when should one be punished for his crime?  It seems
 that most people would say, "always."  I consider this stance to be selfish
 and short-sighted, being based purely upon the irrational emotion we call
 vengeance.  It is my impression that when one uses the word "should" it is
 basically to express a personal preference, but with some level of objective
 benefit, i.e. altruism, and the extent to which exterior benefit plays a
 part reflects one's level of sophistication.  Therefore I hold that, in a
 philosophical/sociological context, "should" should reflect nothing but a
 motion toward the greatest good for the greatest number of people.  Because
 the standing of any one person's happiness over another's--including that
 of a direct or indirect victim of a crime and the criminal--may easily be
 construed as being a personal, subjective preference, it is thus only
 rational to place the benefit, i.e. happiness, of a criminal at the same
 level with the benefit of anyone else in society with respect to what
 "should" be in a sociological context.  If one would rationalize that a
 criminal "deserves" negative emotion because it's "his fault", then I would
 say that it's not his fault that it's his fault.  Ultimately his fault is a
 product of nature and nurture, and/or of absolute chance.  Thus I hold
 essentially the same position as a determinist with respect to punishment,
 though I don't see the logic as being limited to a deterministic modal of
 reality.  The only logical alternative to determinism is some element of
 absolute chance, and a person has even less control over the part that
 absolute chance might play in his conscious than over the part that
 causality may play because he is able to change his decision-making process
 (i.e. rehabilitate or just become more responsible) which is effective
 insofar as causality is the rule.  Is it any surprise, then, that the most
 influential philosopher in recorded history, Jesus, said that we should love
 everybody?  Isn't it presumptuous to assume that you, as a vengeant being,
 could not have been thrust into the same position as the evil criminal?  Of
 course, if you were there would be no way that you could know it in this
 particular incarnation.  You could be everyone who ever existed and not know
 it because of the material illusion of dividuality.  If one would contend
 that dividuality among the essence of persons is not an illusion because the
 material is all that exists, then I would contend that the essence of a
 person is thus material and therefore nothing really matters anyway because
 we all boil down to a lot of subatomic particles and SPC distortian fields
 in complex motion.  (I realize that the logic in that last sentence is
 flawed, but it's pretty.)
Of course, this isn't all to suggest that no criminal should ever be
 detained, fined, tortured, or executed.  In considering what is best for the
 greatest number, it would be nonconducive to ignore the societal benefits of
 deterrence, rehabilitation, and incarceration; and the economic malefactor
 of financially supporting someone who must be incarcerated for life, as
 opposed to administering _efficient_ capital punishment.  In the case of
 venegeful retribution, however, it is my opinion that the pain that a
 criminal must receive in order to satiate the vengeful appetite of direct or
 indirect victims far outweighs the pleasure that the victim(s) thus  
 receive(s).  To legally place the benefit of the victim(s) in such a case
 over that of the criminal, as a token of society's biased sympathy for the
 victim(s) and not for the criminal, is elevating one's selfish preference to
 the status of law and is thus in contradiction to the legal tenet that all
 men are created equal.  Even if the benefit of closure is considered to be
 worth otherwise uncalled for suffering of the criminal, especially as in
 a widely publicized case where the whole of society has anxiety over the
 outcome, legally placing the importance of the former over the latter is
 inconsistent with the underlying principle that one shall not inflict legal
 injury to another person for one's own pleasure, even if it could be
 considered to benedit the criminal in such a case more than hurt the victim.
 In the case of retribution consider the criminal to be society and the
 victim to be the prosecuted, and the case is analogous.  The past crime of
 the prosecuted is irrelevant to the consideration because it is considering
 only the retributionary aspect of punishment (while the other aspects, such
 as deterrence, can be dealt with on their own), and to consider one
 "deserving" of a punishment for any reason that regards the wellbeing of
 one's own or society's conscience with disregard for the criminal's
 wellbeing is selfish or biased and should thus have no place in law.
Much of the time vengeful motives in the U.S. penal system coincide with
 more rational considerations of deterrence and other factors.  However,
 there is always some margin between the _systems's_ philosophically myopic
 legal standings and legal standings that would be consistent with the
 underlying legal tenets as previously discussed and in accordance with the
 determinist's moral philosophy, which is logical whether or not determinism
 is true (though that seems to be universally unrealized due to common
 shortsightedness).

(C)Copyright 1998 Richard A. Nichols III