Your argument is based upon the notion that, if the choice was inevitable since the big bang, then it is AS IF choosing never really happened, and it is AS IF we had no choice, and it is AS IF the choice was already made by someone or something else . The problem is that all three of these figurative statements are literally false. Choosing does happen.
Let's consider the other events of that evening. We walked into the restaurant. We considered the menu of possibilities. We chose the salad. We ordered the salad.
Given causal necessity:
It was inevitable that we would walk into the restaurant.
It was inevitable that we would consider the menu of possibilities.
It was inevitable that we would choose the salad.
It was inevitable that we would order the salad.
Was walking into the restaurant an illusion? No.
Was considering the menu of possibilities an illusion? No.
Was choosing the salad an illusion? No.
Was ordering the salad in illusion? No.
You may disagree, but my conclusion is that the only illusion to be found in this scenario is the illusion that there is some kind of illusion. And that "illusion of an illusion" was caused by taking figurative statements literally.
If the World is under the sway of determinism, everything happens as determined, ... The process is not figurative.
Ah! You've found the SEP article on
Causal Determinism by Carl Hoefer. Hoefer notes the figurative language himself in section “2.4 Laws of Nature”:
“In the physical sciences, the assumption that there are fundamental, exceptionless laws of nature, and that they have some strong sort of modal force, usually goes unquestioned. Indeed, talk of laws “governing” and so on is so commonplace that it takes an effort of will to see it as metaphorical.”
I love the irony in that statement. The notion of the "laws" of nature is a metaphor. The Moon does not consult a legal text to figure out how to orbit the Earth. The term "law" is used to express the reliability of the behavior of the objects involved, it is AS IF they were following an established law. But, they are simply doing what they naturally do, due to their relative masses and the Moon's trajectory. Only the behavior of the physicist is governed by the laws of physics. The laws of physics tell him what he must do to calculate the positions of both the Moon and the rocket to assure that they both show up in the same place and time.
Every action is fixed by prior state. Thoughts, feelings, everything.
Yep. Everything follows upon what went before. Every event is inevitable, including the inevitable thoughts and feelings that we inevitably experience as we inevitably decide for ourselves what we will inevitably do.
Deterministic causal inevitability changes nothing. The notion that it changes how we should view what is going on is an illusion.
Determinism negates the ability to do and choose otherwise.
Apparently that too is an illusion! We can easily demonstrate our ability to order whatever we want from the restaurant menu. The fact that I would inevitably order the salad never altered my ability to order anything else. Do you want to see? Pick anything you want from the menu and watch me order it for you. See? My ability to order the other items is not affected by the inevitability of my ordering the salad for myself.
Of course, what you picked for me to order was causally necessary and inevitable from any prior point in time. But that only means that it was inevitable that you and you alone would pick that item.
You asserted choice in the face of a reality that denies all possibility of doing otherwise, which is the essence meaning of choice'
Determinism never eliminates any possibilities. It simply establishes the actualities, one event at a time, each event reliably caused by prior events, and each event reliably causing subsequent events.
Possibilities do not exist outside of the imagination. A possibility is not an actuality. We can, if we have sufficient ability, convert a possibility into an actuality if we choose to do so. But we need never convert a possibility into an actuality in order for it to remain a real possibility.
"... One of the principles of this logic is, or so it seems, embodied in the following thesis, which I shall refer to as the No Choice Principle:
Suppose that p and that no one has (or ever had) any choice about whether p. And suppose also that the following conditional (if-then) statement is true and that no one has (or ever had) any choice about whether it is true: if p, then q. It follows from these two suppositions that q and that no one has (or ever had) any choice about whether q.
Ah! So that is where you found the "No Choice Principle", in someone's analysis of something Van Inwagen said.
The analysis is
incorrect of course, for the reason I gave earlier: A list of the things we do not choose, however long, does not eliminate anything from the list of things which we do choose.
While I did not choose to build the restaurant and I did not choose what items would be on its menu, I did choose to order the salad, even though I could have chosen to order the steak.
It was inevitable, of course, that I
would not order the steak. But, ironically, it was also inevitable that I
could have.
