Determinism, Free Will and Paradox

[Mudhammam]

If determinism is true, then there's actually no such thing as causality: all points along the "time" line are preset and immalleable.

Say what? Determinism is *only* true if causality exists, and causality exists in so far as there is change, and change is just motion---hence, space and time. "All points along the 'time' line" are not present; the past and future, namely, or those instances in which change has occurred or is yet to occur, are not present except as they exist potentially or actually in that a body has changed and is changing. Since the past is immalleable and determines the present, the present is immalleable in so far as it must be as it presently is, and the future will proceed likewise.

Well, if causality is an illusion, then whatever you choose to do is whatever you must have chosen to do.

But here comes the paradox-- if causality is an illusion, then by what processes can we be said to be caused to "make" a particular choice? Let's say I'm choosing between a Mars Bar and a Snickers Bar. The determinist argument is that the flow of events from time t0, presumably the Big Bang, or from any other time previous to my choice, tn, inevitably arrives at whatever choice I make-- let's say the Snickers Bar. But in a single timeline, this "cause" is no such thing-- the future has already been set, and so those influences which seem causal can equally be seen as filling in a causal vacuum-- the causes HAD to happen, because future even t(n+. . . ) is already a reality.

It's not a reality, presently, but it's one that can be predicted in so far as the present conditions and their subsequent interactions can be hypothetically determined with precision. Maybe I missed something in your other posts but on what basis are you defining time---or motion---out of real existence? Of course the results will be absurd because the notion of everything existing in total stasis is not the world we experience.

It is only how we experience time that we say state tn causes state t(n+1). However, in an immalleable timeline, which determinism necessitates, all events, things and points are related in an unchanging way.

I couldn't disagree more. They are related by the very nature of change itself.

So time itself is the illusion-- it is not in fact a framework in which change happens, but rather a flowing perspective through in immalleable reality.

I agree that time is not "a framework in which change happens"---time IS both non-spatial and spatial change, its measurement depending on the relative velocities of observer and observed.

Okay so why then free will? Because determinism breaks temporal causality. There cannot be anything which causes me to act in a particular manner-- and yet I act. That act, free of causality, is therefore free.

Maybe I'm missing some crucial piece to your dialectic?