Grand Illusion of Free Will

Free will is an illusion.  It is a human fancy that can be supported neither by logic nor by the constraints of reality.  Free will is defined, traditionally, as the individual moral agent possessing the ability for spontaneous choice.  Simply put: a person can choose whatever they want whenever they want it.  The key elements, thus, for free will's definition are spontaneity and choice.  This is to say that free will only exists if the elements of spontaneity and choice are present.

However, if we consider the two things necessary for 'free will' then with some reasoning it can be seen that neither of these things exist in the scope of space/time.  Because both of these things are to be considered necessarily present for free will, they need to be addressed as one.  The point, I submit, is that neither of them actually exists as we may think of them.

Spontaneity means that we may have the ability to make any momentary snap decision desired and that a variety of choices must be present at the moment of that decision's making.  But by that very definition, spontaneity cannot be present while allowing for the maximum number of choices because at any specific moment only a limited number of choices are available.  I cannot wake up and go to sleep at the same time.

We are constrained by reality, then, to limit the number of choices available to the spontaneous chooser, but does this in itself challenge the reality of free will?  Consider a hypothetical scenario to illustrate the point.  For this let us limit the available choices to two in an effort to perhaps address the concepts of spontaneity more acutely.

Say there are only two options on a menu.  Both items are specialties of the restaurant but, nonetheless, any patron may order either one or the other, not both.  One of them is a sweet dish, the other a salty one.  A patron sits down at the booth and makes a spontaneous decision.  However, I submit that the decision is not spontaneous but was in fact predicated upon a number of contributing factors (think preference, health, et al), meaning that the choice was not, in the most rigid sense, a free choice but was in fact a highly predictable one.  In this sense, although the individual experiences a spontaneous choice, there was, in actuality, no real free choice made.

Additionally, we must consider the reality of time, particularly the moment present, that is, the precise instant that past and future meet in the present passing moment as a defined and definite historical mark in time.  If we consider that time is a passing of successive moments and the past is the historical logging of the finite certainty of those moments, then we can say that the past has a defined certainty.  Simply put, once the moment passes it is gone and it can not be re-lived.

In reference to free will this is of particular interest.  Choices are not choices in the past, for once a decision is made in space/time it was the only choice that could have been made.  Once something is written in the record of history, it cannot be re-written.  Because of this certainty, we cannot look back at choices made as hypothetical; we can only see them as sure realities that have passed.

So, in reference to past decisions, we are constrained to say that the definite nature of the past compels us to understand that in the light of history spontaneity and the availability of choice are irrelevant indicators of the presence of free will.

In summation, free will is an illusion because its dependence upon spontaneity and choice cannot be carried throughout the system.  And, as choice meets present that passes into past, we must say that merely the presence of a definite, unalterable past inhibits our understandings of free will.

In the end, will is always impeded by the limitations of reality at the very point that the 'free willing agent' meets the present passing moment.  This is not, obviously, to remove at the very least the appearance of choice, however, it is meant to highlight inherit challenges to conceptions we hold towards the human construct of free will.  To be sure, this has been a less-than-exhaustive look into free will but perhaps it may stir up more consideration of this important categorical assertion of the human condition.