Each and every selection is performed necessarily.
Yes, but so what? Nothing is changed by the fact that everything that happens necessarily happens. What happens still happens, exactly as it does happen. For example, choosing still happens.
At no point in the evolution of events is there an alternate action.
Do you see the first item on the menu? We can actually order that. Now, what do we call the second item on the menu? It is "an alternate action", something that we can order instead of the first item.
We can take a pair of scissors and cut away the rest of the menu, and we would still have two alternate actions.
Action 1: ordering the first item.
Action 2: ordering the second item.
Each action is the alternative to the other. That's what 'alternative' means.
As the 'selection' permits no alternate actions, ...
But there they are. So, to say that determinism "permits no alternate actions" is clearly nonsense. Whatever thought process led you to make such a claim is obviously defective.
... the selection is not chosen,
And it is just as much nonsense to say "the selection is not chosen", because "selecting" is "choosing".
... it is entailed by prior events and processes,
Again, SO WHAT?! Obviously it has been entailed that we will be choosing something from the menu. Obviously it has been entailed that we will be making that choice for ourselves. Obviously it has been entailed that we will not be coerced or unduly influenced while making this choice, thus it is obviously a choice of our own free will.
Deterministic causal necessity changes nothing. I was about to sarcastically say "Get used to it!", but everyone, including you, is already used to it, because we all live in a world of reliable cause and effect. Without reliable cause and effect we could never reliably cause any effect, and I would be unable to type these words into this comment. But, obviously, I am free to do just that.
both environment and brain activity in response to its conditions and events.
Certainly. What else would you expect?
Determinism only permits a singular, fixed path of events.
And that is what we always end up with, a singular path of events in which prior events fix future events. The single path of events that led me to choose the Salad instead of the Steak for dinner included my seeing the juicy Steak dinner on the menu, my recalling that I had bacon and eggs for breakfast and a double cheeseburger for lunch, my inner judgment that I really needed to balance today's diet by adding some vegetables rather than piling on more fats and proteins, so I decided to order the Salad for dinner.
That's a singular path of events, in which specific prior events led inevitably to a specific future event, my choosing the Salad, even though I could have chosen the Steak.
It is very simple and straightforward.
Determinism entails 'must necessarily happen,' not might, may or will. Where will happen equates to must happen.
I assume that you did not mean to include "will" in your "not might, may or will". We both agree that determinism entails everything that 'will' happen. And I think we should both agree that determinism does not entail anything that "might, may, or can" happen.
Most of the things that "might, may, or can" happen are actually
entailed to never happen. For example, only the item on the menu that we actually chose was deterministically entailed to happen. All of the other items on the menu were entailed not to be chosen and thus not to happen.
But the choosing itself was certainly entailed to happen, otherwise it would not have happened. And, us doing that choosing ourselves, was also entailed to happen, otherwise it would not have happened.
And since it was deterministically entailed that we would be making that choice for ourselves, while free of coercion and undue influence, we must also conclude that it was deterministically entailed that we would make that choice "of our own free will". That is, not free of deterministic entailment, but simply free of coercion and undue influence.
Determinism insists that everything that happens was entailed to necessarily happen, exactly as we saw it happening, without any deviation. Determinism never changes anything.
No, choice by definition, requires the possibility of taking a different option when presented with a number of apparent possibilities.
I see you're still confused as to what a "possibility" is. The Steak, which we did not choose, was a possibility. That possibility was rejected when we recalled what we had for breakfast and lunch. But it remained a real possibility because it could have been realized if we had selected it. The fact that we did not select it never made it impossible to select. We could have selected it. But we never would have selected it given the current circumstances (what we had for breakfast and lunch).
That's what we call a "possibility", something that we could have done, even if we never would have done it.
The key word in relation to determinism is the word 'apparent.'
No, the key word in relation to determinism is "actuality". An "actuality" is very different from a "possibility". The actual future is something that "will" happen. A possible future is something that "may or may not" happen. Like we mentioned above, most possibilities will never happen.
The presentation of a number of options doesn't mean that you can take any one of these at any given moment in time.
The assumption of any presentation of options is that you 'can' take any one of them. There is no assumption that any specific item 'will' be taken, but only that each item can be taken. It's that distinction between "can" and "will". They do not mean the same thing.
Again;
To illustrate: ''When you sit in the restaurant looking at the menu, it may seem that there are many things that you might order: the fish, the chicken, the steak, the onion soup. Eventually you will make a selection and eat it. To a determinist, causal processes dictated that what you ordered was inevitable. When you entered the restaurant you may not have known, yet, that you would end up ordering the chicken, but that simply reflects your ignorance of what was happening in your unconscious mind. To a determinist, there was never any chance at all that you could have ordered the fish. Maybe you saw it on the menu and were tempted to get it, and maybe you even started to order it and then changed your mind. No matter. It was never remotely possible. The causal processes that ended up making you order the chicken were in motion. Your belief that you could have ordered the chicken was mistaken.''
If that is what determinism implies, then I would have to reject it, just as the author of that statement, Roy Baumeister, rejects it in the rest of that article.
But Roy's error is that same traditional error that you espouse, that deterministic causal necessity removes all possibilities. Roy is a psychologist. And he knows that the human mind cannot work without the notion of possibility.
But we can have a world of perfectly reliable cause and effect and still keep the notion of possibility, as I've demonstrated repeatedly.
In every day life, we all take reliable cause and effect for granted. We see it in everything we think and do, including our own process of choosing what we will do. The philosophical paradox that attempts to pit one of these against the other is a bit of silly nonsense. To portray this "dispute" as some 'deep' or 'profound' 'metaphysical' issue is the height of bull shit. And no sane person should ever take it seriously.
Actions that are performed necessarily will not be otherwise, even though they could have been otherwise. The philosophical error is failing to see the difference between "can" and "will", between "possibilities" and "actualities".
It can never be otherwise.
Of course it "can" be otherwise, but it "won't" be otherwise. You still refuse to see the difference. And conflating the two is making you say a lot of very silly things, like that choosing isn't happening when obviously it is.
The fact is that determinism can only safely assert that we "would not have done otherwise". It is a logical error to claim that determinism means that we "could not have done otherwise". The incompatibilist speaks of a figurative world that is out of touch with the actual world.
