If prior states of the system entail current and future states of the system, choosing doesn't come into it.
States of the System:
1. We're hungry, and we've just sat down at a table in the restaurant.
2. We've picked up the menu (in order to satisfy our hunger, we must choose something from the menu).
3. We are considering that juicy Steak.
4. But then we recall that we had bacon and eggs for breakfast and a double cheeseburger for lunch.
5. We go back to the menu to look for some vegetables.
6. We find several salads, and the Chef Salad looks good.
7. We have decided to order the Chef Salad.
8. We tell the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".
As you can see, (a) each state of the system entails the next state of the system and (b) choosing was right there in the middle of it.
Once again, the claim that "if prior states of the system entail current and future states of the system, choosing doesn't come into it", is simply and very obviously false.
Choosing not only happens, but it necessarily happens. It was causally necessary/inevitable, from any prior point in eternity, that choosing would happen right then and right there in the restaurant.
And it's not just us, but everybody in the restaurant, obviously choosing what they will have for dinner.
Entailment doesn't involve choice.
Apparently it does. In fact, entailment involves every single event prior to that choice, the events within that choosing, and all events following that choice.
The notion of entailment is not some magic eraser that can be used to remove events from the causal chain. Erase any one of the links and the chain collapses.
How is it choosing when you order steak at 8:35pm on Saturday night, as determined, if is just as inevitable as raindrops falling from the sky?
It simply is what it is. Choosing is inevitable. Raining is inevitable. We cannot claim that raining is not happening due to inevitability. We cannot claim that choosing is not happening due to inevitability. Both claims are equally false.
Complexity doesn't transform inevitability into freedom.
There is no such thing as "freedom from causal necessity/inevitability". Every freedom that we have, to do anything at all, is inevitably us, inevitably deciding for ourselves, according to our own inevitable goals and our own inevitable reasons, what we will inevitably do. Got that?
There is no need to be free from causal inevitability in order to be free to do what we want.
Like Robert Kane said, “It might be true that you would have done otherwise if you had wanted, though it is determined that you did not, in fact, want otherwise.”
If my wants are inevitable, and my choosing from these wants what I will do is also inevitable, then causal inevitability is neither a meaningful nor a relevant constraint upon my doing what I want.
But a guy with a gun, telling me to do what HE wants me to do, rather than what I want, is a meaningful and relevant constraint upon my freedom to do what I want.
We are talking about determinism, not freedom to do other than what is entailed to happen in that instance in time and place.
We've gone over what is entailed to happen in the restaurant above, and have done so repeatedly in our prior comments. And we find that choosing is entailed. And that it was also entailed that we would not be subject to coercion or undue influence, therefore it was our own decision, our own freely chosen "I will" ("I will have the Chef Salad, please").
You keep insisting that we use "freedom from causal necessity/inevitability" as the definition of free will. But there simply is no such thing. It is a bit of silly nonsense. There is no freedom at all without reliable cause and effect.
And what we will inevitably do, due to causal necessity, is exactly identical to us just being us, choosing to do what we choose to do. This is neither a meaningful nor a relevant constraint upon our freedom.
