My point is simple. Causal necessity does not change anything in any meaningful or relevant way. All events are always the result of prior causes. And this happens to include the "free will" event. Free will is an event in which a person decides for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and undue influence.
All causally necessary events actually happen in physical reality. Even mental events correspond to physical brain processes which are happening in physical reality. So, when choosing happens, it is really happening, as a physical event within a physical brain.
The brain organizes sensory data into a symbolic model of reality. It represents this reality with language and sensory images. With this model, it imagines possible futures (what I can do and what can happen) and possible pasts (what I could have done and what could have happened). It forms plans and sets its intent upon doing specific things (what I will do), either right now (I will have the Chef Salad for dinner) or in the future (my "last will and testament").
Our presumption, that all events are reliably caused, comes from our daily observation of how things happen. I press the "H" key on my keyboard (cause) and an "h" appears in the text (effect). My ability (freedom) to type my thoughts requires a reliable keyboard. If pressing the keys caused random letters to appear in the text, my freedom to type my thoughts would be gone.
Every freedom we have, to do anything at all, requires reliable cause and effect. And this applies to the reliability of our thinking brains as much as it does upon the reliability of our computer keyboards.
Consider the notion of determinism. Determinism asserts that all events are causally necessary from any prior point in the past. Causal necessity is derived from the fact of ordinary cause and effect. One event causes another event which causes other events, ad infinitum. In theory (but definitely not in practice), we could trace a history of prior causes all the way back to the Big Bang (or earlier, depending upon your cosmology).
For example, if I roll the bowling ball just so, it will cause all of the pins to fall down. But, how did I happen to be in a bowling alley in the first place? There will be a history of prior causes that led to me being in that place at that time. If we go back farther, we know that there will be a history of prior causes that led to my birth, and my parents birth, and to the evolution of the human race, and the first single celled organisms, and eventually to the Big Bang, a convenient stopping point.
Now, back to the reliability of our thinking brains. Some people, called "hard determinists", would suggest to us that it was not really us that bowled a "strike" (all ten pins falling on the first roll), but rather that it was the Big Bang that actually rolled the strike. The Big Bang would deserve the pat on the back from our bowling team members, and not us. They would argue that our skilled roll of the bowling ball was causally inevitable from the point of the Big Bang forward, so we would deserve no credit for the hours of practice we spent developing our bowling skills.
Basically, they are saying that causal necessity implies that it was not us, but something else that bowled the strike. (We don't often hear a discussion of bowling in the determinism "versus" free will debate. But this is not at all absurd, because we commonly hear the hard determinist using examples involving billiard balls and dominoes).
But the principle is the same. The hard determinist will claim that it was not us, but something else, that chose to order the Chef Salad rather than the Steak for dinner. They claim that "choosing" isn't actually happening in physical reality, which is exactly like suggesting that "bowling" isn't really happening in physical reality.
Choosing, like bowling, definitely happens in physical reality. Choosing happens in our brains. Bowling happens in a bowling alley. But both are actual events that actually happen.
The term "
inevitable" is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: "That cannot be avoided; not admitting of escape or evasion; unavoidable. In extended use: that cannot fail or is bound to occur, appear, be used, etc.; that is inherent (in) or naturally belongs
to (see also quot. 1893)."
If an event is inevitable, then it will necessarily happen. It cannot be avoided. If I bowled a strike, then, given causal necessity, it was inevitable that I would bowl that strike. If I chose to order the Chef Salad rather than the Steak, then it was inevitable that I would be making that choice myself.
Rather than making choosing impossible, the notion of causal necessity makes choosing inevitable. It is an event that must happen, an event that cannot be avoided. My consideration of the Chef Salad was inevitable. My consideration of the Steak was inevitable. My choosing the salad rather than the steak, because I had bacon and eggs for breakfast and a double cheeseburger for lunch, was inevitable.
And, because it was inevitable that I would not be subject to coercion or undue influence while making that choice, it was inevitable that it would be a choice of my own free will.
When we think of something being "inevitable", we usually imply that it is beyond our control. But within the context of causal necessity, the inevitable also includes the events in which we exercise control by choosing what we will do. Our controlling the events that are within our control, is also inevitable.
Our inevitable reasons, our inevitable goals, our inevitable beliefs and values, our inevitable thoughts and feelings, our inevitable genetic dispositions and prior life experiences, are the inevitable causes of our own inevitable decisions.
When we take causal necessity/inevitability seriously, we discover that all events are always inevitable. It is a background constant of our universe. It is something we take for granted. And, assuming it is a universal constant, it becomes unnecessary to explicitly state it. Like any constant that appears on both sides of an equation, we can subtract it from both sides without affecting the outcome.
Thus, our more complex statement reduces to a much simpler one:
Our reasons, our goals, our beliefs and values, our thoughts and feelings, our genetic dispositions and prior life experiences -- basically all of the things that make us who and what we are -- are the causes our decisions.
Universal causal necessity/inevitability doesn't actually change anything that happens or how anything was caused to happen. It simply points out that there is a history of prior causes behind every event.
We usually only care about the most meaningful and relevant causes of an event. A meaningful cause efficiently explains why an event happened. A relevant cause is one that we might be able to do something about. These are usually the most direct causes, the ones closest to the event. As we trace backward through the causal chain the causes become less meaningful and more incidental.
So, when someone robs a bank, we're not really interested in the Big Bang, but instead concentrate upon how the robber happened to make that choice and what we might do to discourage him from continuing to make such choices.
1. No one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature.
2. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).
3. Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future.
1. I am a fact of the past and the laws of nature.
2. I entail certain facts of the future by my choices.
3. I need not exercise control over the laws of nature, because I happen to be an embodiment of those laws, which gives me power over facts of the future that fall within my domain of influence (things I can make happen if I choose to do so).
There is no think or do 'otherwise' within a deterministic system.
And I never have to think or do otherwise than I actually think and do, in order to choose from the restaurant menu whether to order the salad or the steak. After all, both are realizable possibilities (even though only one will be realized and the other will remain an unrealized possibility, that is, something that I could have done, but didn't).
The brain has the capacity to think and imagine, but not do otherwise.
The ability to do otherwise never requires that we actually do otherwise. There is a clear distinction between the things we "can" do and the things that we "will" do. You seem to be assuming that if we will not do something then we could not have done it. And that is an illogical assumption.
If you eliminate the notions of "can" and "possibilities", you
break the machinery. And that's not a good idea, because the ability to choose what we will do, from a number of different options, has evolved to enable our species to adapt to a variety of challenges we find in our environment. It has enhanced our ability to survive.
