First, let me say that I have no worries that humans are somehow frozen. Anybody worried about that need only step outside for a few minutes and view real humans exhibiting real behavior. Ask any child if they can be happy or do what they want. This absurd anxiety about the implications of determinism is refuted trivially.

If computers can't make choices, then neither can humans, and vice versa. I like to say humans and computers make choices, because when presented with a new set of options they consider some criteria, and take account of some goals, and really select the option that best fits the criteria. But this kind of choice is not what humans intuitively feel they are doing (in my opinion). Humans feel they are defying inevitability with a personal freedom to alter the course of history in a way that could not be predicted by God, or Pascal's Daemon, or the most infinite conceivable computer simulation. I don't think humans or computers do this when they choose. True the brain operates according to different principles than a digital Von Neuman machine, but both choose in ways that are determined by the well-understood physics they are founded upon. The brain has plasticity that computers lack, and a superior learning ability, and it seems to make up for being slower at what one might call discrete state transitions by using a far more complex network of associations and what we would think of as massive parallelism. It's so highly parallelized compared to a sequential Turing/Von Neuman model that it transcends the notion of a discrete number of parallel sequences of computation, in a way we might call organic, or a complex fabric. I'd say the fundamental difference between a brain and a computer with respect to freedom and choice is in the complexity of the programming, not just in the number of available states, but in the extraordinary number of kinds of states available to the brain and its ability to extend that range using learning and plasticity.

Because of the segregation of thought into conscious and unconscious, and the resultant limited view of the conscious mind, humans are subject to certain illusions about themselves. I feel like compatibilism places its emphasis on defending against a very pessimistic view of what determinism could imply, and is unwilling to admit the interior illusions humans have about their personal freedom. As I mentioned above, this pessimistic view is easily dismissed. Compatibilist justifications of the "free will" label using linguistic explanations such as imagined counterfactuals or prescriptive statements are, and I can't put this politely, laughably absurd. It seems obvious to me that our language is heavily influenced by our interior illusions, and that these interior illusions lead very simply and naturally to the mistake that was made not only by Des Cartes, but by humans going back at least ten thousand years and probably much further. This mistake is the idea of a soul, of dualism. This mistake seems as natural to me as a spider being confused by reflections in a mirror or a cat confused by images on an iPad. Inside we feel we effortlessly decide. We don't experience either the complexity or the inevitability. Add to that the experience of witnessing the lifeless bodies of our formerly near and dear ones, and the idea of the soul seems an inevitable natural conclusion born of ignorance of the real reasons that humans can either be animated and alive, or inert flesh. Is it any wonder then that human history up to now has been almost entirely dominated by religion, and should we be surprised if our language is full of relics of dualism?

So I'm very suspicious of these language based arguments used by compatibilists to justify the notion that we have free will. The so-called compatibilist words all carry semantic value imported from a dualist conception of reality, just as the word choice does (no I don't think these words need to be eliminated as the mocking sarcasm sometimes implies). There is a reason people get confused about the question of whether computers make choices, or better yet, if computers "have a choice" when they decide things. That confusion is a sign of legacy dualism in our language, buried like relics in the gap between our words and their meanings.

Responding to your two stages:

1. Perhaps most humans have an ego problem with the notion of inevitability, or perhaps I'm understanding the word differently than others are. I would say yes we act autonomously in the present, and yes our actions are inevitable. Yes we do what we want, but we do it because the physical state of our brains makes it inevitable. If I'm presented with a choice between chocolate and vanilla (or no ice cream) my choice will be as inevitable as my falling if I step off a cliff. But it's also what I want. We just don't recognize the inevitability because there is no simple predictable cause and effect relationship visible to us. The relationship between what I want and what I choose us inevitable but channeled through a web of deterministic intelligence so unfathomably complex and diverse in its latitude that we mistake it as freedom from inevitability. And there is, granted, a real sense in which it differs from simple billiard ball inevitability, but that difference doesn't arise from freedom, it arises from complexity. There is a sub-meaning of the word freedom that can be sensibly used in this context, but there are other meanings of the word freedom that conflict, so to call this free is confusing to people who don't have a lot of background and time to sort out the nuances. A dog on a short chain or a prisoner in a cell has relative degrees of freedom, but they are not free. We can increase their relative degrees of freedom by lengthening the chain or expanding the cell. But still they are not free. Instead what has happened is the increase of surface area within their confinement has increased the range of opportunities of movement. Of course this has value, but we don't call it free. Human freedom is very analogous to this. Just as a prisoner is not free to leave his cell, we are not free to choose other than we do. But this is not the problem that a simple analysis might imagine it to be because our complex intelligence transforms this inevitability and lack of freedom into something much better than the simple compliance with an external compulsion, which is probably most people's first and most common idea of inevitability. The convolutions of our mind turns our inevitable choice into an intelligent winnowing of options down to the one that we want, the one our knowledge and experience determines is best for us. The only difference between this and a very winding river following its inevitable course is in the complexity, not in a fundamental difference of freedom. It helps a lot that it is inside us, it is part of us, it is who we are, but it isn't freedom. More degrees of relative freedom, okay, but release from bondage, no. Our subjective illusions tell us we were free to choose otherwise, but it simply is not true.

2. No, the difference in degrees of freedom does not justify the label "free will". The degrees of freedom are good and substantial, and allow us options for happy and satisfying existence <i>just as they always have.</i> One is even tempted to say it is not a bad approximation of freedom. But if one worries about the implications of determinism, it seems to me the obvious ability of humans that is visible to everyone everywhere means that there is no justification for the concerted effort to build a firewall against the dreaded pessimism and fear of being petrified by inevitability. We have to face inevitability and deal with it, just as we have to give up on heaven and face the real finality of death. Yes, this pessimism and fear is an intellectual error when considering the implications of determinism. But only someone lost in their intellect and shielded from direct experience of reality could really fall under the spell of that error. We see all the time people making this error, but rather than throwing them into a state of suicidal despair, the default reaction is to reject determinism because of the overwhelming amount of apparent and illusory "evidence" against determinism surrounding them in society and in their subjective experience. It just seems clear to me that the default human standpoint, if one is raised in a natural environment without rigorous training in science or philosophy, is a dualistic belief in an effortless free will that allows them to escape inevitability. We know this is false and contrary to natural reality, but the illusions in the human subjective mind encourage this error. So while compatibilism's intent seems to be to illuminate the reasons why people don't need to be pessimistic and depressed about determinism, people's natural tendency seems to be the opposite: to reject determinism and go happily on their way under their traditional dualist illusions. So perhaps compatibilism helps those educated and open minded enough to grasp determinism, but still struggling with the natural human illusions of dualism. But it seems to me an an unintended consequence of compatibilism is to serve as a conservative force to reassure the vast majority of humanity still under the natural dualist illusions, a kind of barrier to understanding constructed by using language that is deeply infected with dualist assumptions. The compatibilist notion of free will is hard to understand, it takes work to understand. Even though it is a kind of freedom worth having, and it is the only kind of freedom that could exist, it is a kind of freedom that runs counter to natural human intuitions about freedom (assuming mine are natural, and the domination of history by religion and the soul are natural). The natural intuitions are wrong and dualist, and compatibilism can only be understood by painstakingly teasing out the subtle and nuanced deterministic sub-meanings from the language we have inherited from a history dominated by dualism. In my view, compatibilism, while I think it is all true once you understand the specialized limited meanings of choice and freedom that are used, is focusing on the smaller problem that some people might feel pessimistic when the truth of determinism first dawns on them, while ignoring, even placating or aiding and abetting (albeit unintentionally), the much larger problem that most people are more prone to simply reject determinism as a delusion of geeky scientists, like they do evolution and global warming.

See the problem? The average person, or all the below average persons, might see a headline and blurb level discussion about "free will" and without really understanding, they will be reassured by that compatibilist fellow who has the good sense to say humans have free will, because after all it was their free will that led them to choose Jesus or Mohammed or Krishna, and they don't want to corrupt their soul or their children's soul with the idea that humans don't have free will. Next thing you know those crazy scientists will say we're monkeys, even though that's been disproven by God's books.

So part of my objection to calling human intelligence "free will" is that it bolsters the mistaken views of those billions of humans who believe they have a soul. And while learning the truth can be a painful shock, I think the world will be better off when people have accurate views, not comforting and false views. Granted a consensus in evolution and global warming has not succeeded in convincing the world over night. But imagine the even worse confusion if there weren't a consensus. So I wish there were consensus on free will, and I wish that consensus were what I regard as the more deeply true argument, that we truly do not have free will. We have something good, obviously, and if you narrow the meaning of "freedom" you can say we have a kind of it, but not complete freedom. And our limited freedom is not predicated on our will. It's predicated on the complexity of our intelligence, which happens to include the feeling of "willing" in its workings. So saying we have free will is a comforting preservation of tradition that does not accurately describe the relationship between deterministic human intelligence and observed human behavior, and misleads the billions of religious dualists alive today.

As explained above, we are not free of determinism, we are not free of causality, we are not free of inevitability. Yes we have relative degrees of freedom, which is a different concept sharing a common word with the concept of "freedom". It is not being free, any more than the prisoner or chained dog is free. Nature has simply granted us a very long chain tethered to the post of determinism and inevitability. That metaphorical chain is not "free will", it is the extraordinary diversity of our range of possible behaviors, the extraordinary adaptability and flexibility of our mind's capacity for abstraction and learning, it is our intelligence that creates wide margins between how our behavior looks and how the behavior of a leaf passively blowing in the wind looks. True freedom doesn't enter into it. And "will" certainly isn't a source of freedom. It appears to just be one of the subjective tools our mind uses to do its work of transforming metabolized energy into behavior that advances our self interest.

At the outset of Compatibilism, which I assume means the Stoics, the task was not to prove we have free will, it was to prove determinism. Free will was taken for granted. Today the Compatibilists have won this particular fight: even though all the evidence of our senses tells us that humans have some special kind of freedom that sets them apart from nature, in fact we are very smart deterministic machines, just as the Stoics suspected. Determinism has won, and Compatibilism has helped make this happen. Now the task has changed. The problem isn't that determinism seems unbelievable. The problem is that too many people believe they have some special property that distinguishes us from the rest of nature. The truth, as Compatibilists have shown, is that we have no such special property to distinguish us from other smart mammals or computers in kind, but only in degree. We are not free of determinism, but we are significantly cushioned from the hard limitations of determinism by the complex intelligence we possess. To address this new problem, we need a consensus that concurs we don't have "free will" in the traditional sense. Yes I know Compatibilist tradition goes back a long way, but it doesn't compete with religious traditions, which require a divinely gifted freedom indistinguishable from dualism.