Determinism

Although this will be a short round for me, I believe what I present is pretty compelling. There is strong evidence that brain activity occurs before feeling of choice, suggesting an illusion of free willIn an experiment conducted by Benjamin Libet et al. where participants were told to move their fingers at any time they chose, scans of their brain showed that cerebral activity to tell the fingers to move occurs before they reported deciding that they wanted to move their fingers or felt the desire to do so[2]. When the experiment was performed again in 2011 by Itzhak Fried, Roy Mukamel, and Gabriel Kreiman, the same results were found[3]. This suggests that the experiment is replicable, and gives it more credence. Fried was able to also predict when participants chose to do this action, before they even had conscious awareness they were going to do it themselves. This suggests that the brain acts independently of our own conscious awareness of when we "choose" to do something, and we only think we have free will. It certainly seems intuitive to believe we have free will, since it feels like you get to choose all of your actions. You can "freely" move your arm and body parts, but since the brain fires up before you're even aware of your choice to move your body, do you really even have free will? There are brain differences in people who are more likely to commit violenceIt's been found that in criminal minds and violent people, there is an increase amount of serotinin which is causing them to have escalated violence[4] and even psychopaths have very different brains that are causing them to be the way that they are[5]. None of these people had control over how their brain turned out, and since the brain is what determines how we will act, this suggests we have no control over how we act. I contend, therefore, that because we have no control over our brains, we don't control the input of our decision making process. There is strong evidence to suggest that our brain and psychology is dependent on genetic and environmental factors. There are numerous studies that suggest our brain and psychology are dependent on genetic and environmental factors[6][7][8]. We neither choose our genetics nor the environment we are born into. Since these are the primary factors in shaping our brain and psychology, they determine how we will act. Can you honestly say that if you had the same genes and were raised in the same exact way as a psychopath, that you would be any different? If you believe that, then what makes you believe you'd choose to do different things than a psychopath? Additionally, if you had the same genes and environment as a suicidal person, can you honestly say that you wouldn't be suicidal? If you say yes, you need to back this up with evidence. Conclusion of this round:I believe these three evidences are compelling: 1) there being strong evidence for the fact that the brain has activity in it suggesting we will do something before we even know we plan on doing it 2) Brain differences in every person that affect how we will act, and how violent people have an increase of serotinin and 3) Evidence that our psychology and brain are dependent on our genetic and environmental factors. All of these facts point to that we have little to no control over our actions. I'll turn this over to my opponent, who will be arguing that free will and determinism is compatible or that there is a mixture of the two ideas. Sources:[2] . http://www.trans-techresearch.net...[3] . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[4] . http://www.brainfacts.org...[5] . http://www.med.wisc.edu...[6] . http://www.nature.com... [7] . https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org... [8] . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...