Nihilism

[vulcanlogician]

My bold.

Regardless of metaphysics, there are times when we are confronted with two or more alternatives. When this happens, we take time to deliberate, and following this deliberation, make a selection. There is a name for this phenomenon: choosing. Hard incompatibilists insist that any choice one way or the other is caused by antecedent states and events, but they acknowledge that a deliberation process still occurs--whether one is in control of it or not.

Determinism might imply that our choices and efforts have earlier sufficient causes; it does not imply that we don’t make choices or that our choices and efforts are causally impotent. Determinism is consistent with the fact that our deliberation, choices and efforts are part of the causal process whereby our bodies move and cause further effects in the world. And a cause is the kind of thing that “makes a difference” (Sartorio 2005). If I raise my hand because I chose to do so, then it’s true, ceteris paribus, that if my choice had not occurred, my hand-raising would not have occurred.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/incom...llIncoDete