Free-will most likely does not exist (Spinkos philosophy tourney 1st round)

Thanks to Lannan for accepting. C.1 All acts are causally determined or random leaving no room for free-will First off, I shall explain why all my three assumptions are the case. The three claims in this contention are that all acts are random or determined, that random acts don’t leave room for free-will, and that determined acts don’t leave room for free-will. Determined acts are acts brought about by the laws of causality and nature. Each action has a reaction/affect leading to other actions and so on. So one such pseudo-choice would be simply brought about by previous reactions in your body, brain and externally that you had no control over. Even conscious events would be included in this causal process. For example, evaluating what burger to buy could have many conscious but still causal influences. One thought leads to another after all. Acts brought about by causality cannot be free choices. One argument can make that assertion quite obvious. Just consider causality entails inevitability. One accumulation of effects must result in one single possible reaction and so on. Therefore the effect that occurred all the way towards the beginning of the causal chain resulted in an inevitable chain of events. We can’t possibly have control over nor be conscious of the early cause and effects so we can’t possibly have free-will for determined actions. Random acts are those that somehow escape the laws of causality and happen merely by chance and unpredictably, such as a quantum neurological events in your brain. Those even more obviously cannot leave room for free-will because randomness is entirely uncontrollable. So random acts and causal acts quite obviously cannot include free-will. Those are the only acts that happen, so free-will is eliminated. A persons mind and character and actions are all decided upon internal influences such as genetic and biological and external influences such as environmental. We are merely the sum of the molecular positions of our body and the vastly complex ordering of nerves and atoms. Most probably there are thousands of tiny direct miniature causes that affect one act a person commits. In the vast sum of things that number could be incredibly more large when we consider the chain of cause and effect could stem all the way back to even the big-bang. Any single act is fully caused by these influences, random or determined. They are the only acts that exist in our physical universe. Therefore no act includes any concept of free-will. The problem with grasping the concept of having no free-will is because we have such a strong illusion of it, but let me try to make it a bit clearer. Suppose a single random event in your brain causes you to lurch your arm into the air. Would anyone say that was a free act of choice? Obviously not. You had no control over it. It just happened at random. Suppose in another scenario aliens had taken control of your mind and were influencing your body to cause you to make choices that you thought you were making freely. That also would obviously not be free-will either. So any libertarian or compatibilist can agree with us here but in reality things aren’t much different. Aliens may not control us but our acts are still determined by our physical makeup. It’s like a machine operating according to its mechanical build. Humans are just the same; simply mechanistic creatures. Our actions are bound by our chemistry and the world behind us. It just happens that we have the illusion of free-will. In the first two scenarios I posted, we had all the influences before us so that it was obvious it wasn’t free-will. One reason why free-will is such an illusion is because the vast majority of influences we are entirely unconscious of. If we had a map and explanation for every single influence that caused us to make a choice, I make the confident guess that free-will would be just as evidently false as with the first two analogies. But most of what causes us to act is entirely out of our realm of detection. When pondering what to buy and not to buy at the grocery store, a basic cost/benefit analysis is taking place in your brain so that in the end, your choice is wholly decided by your natural preferences, character, genetics, whatever mood you happened to be in that day, what your surroundings were and more. If the cost is a little high, you'll only buy it if you have enough money or are someone who is a naturally uncautious buyer. Many other factors way in. We can easily accept the fact that we are born with a personality consisting of a blend of thousands of different tiny character traits. As our character determines what we do, we can extrapolate our actions are based upon what properties we are born with. Our personality then shapes according to social and environmental factors throughout our life. Everything we do is decided by our physical makeup and the world around us. This leaves free-will as an impossibility. If our acts aren’t triggered, they’re random. Those are the only two possibilities. C.2 Free-will is an incoherent concept It’s impossible to really conceive what free-will actually is. Take any action and ask what it was. Was it caused or random? Both those options are certainly possible and conceivable but it’s hard to imagine any other option. It’s one reason why free-will is so hard to define even for libertarians. All acts come down to the laws of causality (determinism) or random chance (indeterminacy). Thus all acts arise from the laws of nature and are bound by them, making nothing free. Random actions escape the laws of causality but what can escape the laws of causality and randomness? What possible physical action in this universe is neither random nor caused? And how exactly does a physical action occur without something to make it occur and not being random? Things don’t happen by themselves unless through randomness. If they do happen because of something then that’s causality and we’re back at the problem. Considering these thoughts, free-will merely seems as some magical concept. We can’t really define what it is and what it means to act freely. Part of cons burden is to set up a coherent concept of what free-will is. Otherwise he cannot win the debate. C.3 ‘Choices’ are shown to be made before the agent is conscious of them In tests, neuroscientists have detected actions a person makes moments before he is even conscious of them. It’s one thing when we’re conscious of decisions but when we act before consciousness of the decision takes place, free-will entirely leaves the picture. “He wired people to an electroencephalogram and measured when they reported having a particular conscious thought about an action [...] and when the actual action started. Astoundingly, the latter came first: that is, subjects had actually made (unconsciously) the decision to act measurably earlier than when they became aware of it consciously. The conscious awareness, in a sense, was a "story" that the higher cognitive parts of the brain told to account for the action. It's as if the conscious brain was not the decider but simply the spokesperson.” http://files.meetup.com... “Libet asked his experimental subjects to move one hand at an arbitrary moment decided by them, and to report when they made the decision (they timed the decision by noticing the position of a dot circling a clock face). At the same time the electrical activity of their brain was monitored. Now it had already been established by much earlier research that consciously-chosen actions are preceded by a pattern of activity known as a Readiness Potential (or RP). The surprising result was that the reported time of each decision was consistently a short period (some tenths of a second)after the RP appeared. This seems to prove that the supposedly conscious decisions had actually been determined unconsciously beforehand.” http://www.consciousentities.com...