WW3, when I was looking up Searle just now, I found an academic paper describing his own position. The introduction to the paper serves as a good introduction to the free will versus determinism debate:
According to Searle, we have two convictions concerning the world and ourselves, that cannot be
reconciled1: First, we think of everything in nature as determined, which means that every event that
occurs has antecedently sufficient causes – it just had to occur, given a cause plus certain
conditions. To put it more bluntly: If we knew everything about the state of the world at t1, and had
complete knowledge of the laws of cause and effect, we would be able to predict the state of the
world at t2. As this determinism is hold to be true for nature, it is also to be hold to be true for us, for
we are natural beings. Following Searle’s biological naturalism2, our mind – including our will –
makes no exception.
This leads to the second conviction, which contradicts the implications of determinism in nature:
We consider ourselves to have a free will, based on the experience of not being compelled by our
reasons to arrive at a certain decision. Furthermore, our decision doesn’t force us to initiate the
action we decided for. At last, even while performing an action we decided for, we can stop that
action or complete it, which demands a permanent confirmation of our decision to act. Searle
denotes these three experiences as gaps in the course of acting and takes them as an indication for
gaps in the course of cause and effect, which usually determines nature. The gaps we find at the top
level, which includes our conscious process of decision-making and action, must be found likewise
at the lowest level, otherwise they are just an illusion: „If freedom is real, then the gap has to go all
the way down to the level of neurobiology.“3
One way to handle the problem of free will is to argue for compatibilism, which is the view that
determinism and human freedom do not logically exclude each other. All actions are as determined
by sufficient causes as every other event in the world. A free action, according to this view, is an
action which is caused not by external force but exclusively by internal causes, amongst which are
rational considerations, desires, aversions and some such.
For Searle, compatibilism doesn’t address the true problem of free will. The crucial question that
troubles him is rather an empirical one: “Is it the case that for every human action that ever occurred
in the past, is occurring now, or ever will occur, the action was caused by antecedently sufficient
conditions?”4 If the answer is positive, then human freedom is an illusion: we just have the strong
feeling to be free, but this impression is unjustified. If on the other hand the answer is negative, we
are truly free, as we are able not only to act on reasons and deliberations, but purely out of our own
will. Apparently, the compatibilist’s conception of freedom is much weaker than Searle’s, who is
dedicated to the stronger conception of freedom as free will, whereas the compatibilist clings to
freedom as free action. One might say that in the first case, I can want what I want, and in the
second case, I can do what I want, but what I want is determined.
source (pdf)