Determinism: Free will is an illusion

Free will is an illusion. Every action is caused by previous events, hence, no action can be freely chosen. Immanuel Kant writes : "If one takes attributes of existence of things in time for attributes of things in themselves, which is the usual way of thinking, the necessity in the causal relation can in no way be united with freedom. They are contradictory to each other, for the former implies that every event, and consequently every action which occurs at a certain point of time, is necessary under the condition of what preceded it. Since the past is no longer in my power, every action which I perform is necessary because of determining grounds which are not in my power. That means that at the time I act I am never free." In addition, before the human consciousness willingly takes an action the unconsciousness of the brain has already begun that action. Since the free will of humans has no control of the unconsciousness, human actions are necessarily deterministic. Benjamin Libet writes, "Our experimental evidence, described in Chapter 2, showed that activations of the sensory cortex have to proceed for up to about 500 msec to produce awareness of a sensory signal. When the duration of the luminal stimulus to the sensory cortex was reduced below the threshold --- such as 400 msec or even 450 msec – no sensory awareness was reported. The subjects reported, "I felt nothing." A similar situation was found for trains of stimulus pulses applied to specific ascending sensory pathway in the brain; this is the fast pathway from the medulla to cerebral cortex. In spite of this presumed actual delay in the awareness of the boy and the ball for up to 500 msec, you are capable of slamming on the break in about 150 msec or less after the [the boy appeared. That action, therefore, must be performed unconsciously, without awareness. Amazingly, your delayed awareness can be automatically but subjectively antedated, or referred back in time, so you would report seeing the boy immediately. Stepping on the brake is not a simple spinal reflex. It involves recognizing the nature of the signal and a decision to act, in order not to hit him. This fairly complex mental function is carried out unconsciously. We were able to examine this issue experimentally. What we found, in short, was that the brain exhibited an initiating process, beginning 550 msec before the freely voluntary act; but awareness of the conscious will to perform the act appeared only 150—200 msec before the act. The voluntary process is therefore initiated unconsciously, some 400 msec before the subject becomes aware of her will or intention to perform the act." According to the law of the excluded middle, every statement must either be true or false, regardless of time frame. The implication is that even though humanity has no access to this knowledge, the future is already predetermined because all statements regarding the future are already determined to be either true or false from the beginning of time. Alessandro Becchi explains "Historically, several different formulations of the principle of the excluded middle have been given; here we'll adopt the following: every proposition is either true or false, that is, it possesses one and only one of the two truth values, truth and falsity. In this sense the principle of the excluded middle amounts to the so called ‘principle of bivalence'. If we consider future-tensed sentences, this logical principle seems to entail determinism. Take for instance the sentence ï¿½Tomorrow noon Bin Laden will be captured by the American soldiersï¿½, as uttered today; according to the excluded middle such a sentence expresses a proposition that is already now true or false. But if such proposition is already true today then it seems that the fact at issue must necessarily occur tomorrow (analogously if the proposition is false). Really, it doesn't matter at all if such a sentence is actually uttered or thought by someone or not; it seems to be in the very nature of the case whether the fact described by such a sentence will occur or not. And such a fact would be ‘decided' from all eternity."