Lets talk about the status of causality!

In our philosophical understanding of the world, we have to juggle two contradictory notions of causal relationships. These two notions are determinism and indeterminism. A deterministic framework implies the neccessary connection of causes and effects into a linear chain. In this chain, every effect has a (temporally) antecedent cause, so effects without causes are not allowed. An indeterministic framework implies nothing more than that there may be effects without causes.

We need the deterministic framework if we are to theorize about the world, that is, insofar as reality IS deterministic, it can be captured by theory. This is clear if we notice that most theories (like physics, etc.) provide causal explanations. Insofar as the world IS indeterministic, it will be ungraspable by theory, since we cannot provide a causal explanation for a phenomenon consisting of uncaused effects.

We do need indeterminism to make sense of the notion of a volition, act, or choice. If the phenomenon I identify as a 'free' choice is in reality caused by antecedent conditions that extend back in a causal chain to a point prior to my existence, then I must concede that I really had no choice in the matter. My illusion of choice is really just a little part of the great cosmic domino chain.

So which one wins out? I'll only say this: If we ascribe to reality an indeterministic structure, we can then explain the emergence of approximately deterministic systems which we experience and study (scientifically). This explains how we can have free will and still live in a comprehensible, pattern following world, with relationships between things intuitively graspable by its inhabitants. If we assume that reality is deterministic in structure, there seems to be no explaination for the emergence of indeterministic phenomenon.