No More Free Will

It's very convincingly argued and makes sense. The concept of free will doesn't really make sense to me anyway. If it means the ability to make your own decisions, then every act a person commits is through their own free will, since no one can act for you. If it means to make a decision without external pressure, bias or influence, then nothing anyone does is through their own free will. I suppose we largely regard exercising 'free will' as any decision made where we recognise two similarly easy choices (as opposed to an easy choice and a very difficult choice - such as choosing whether or not to follow the orders of someone pointing a gun at you.)

Perhaps free will is an illusion, and destiny locks each of us into a preordained conclusion. Perhaps the future is as immutable as the past, and the only difference between a moment ago and a moment from now is that we just haven't experienced it yet. Is randomness just our lack of perception about what is going to occur? Immanuel Kant said that cause and effect were just apriori judgements about time and space. I'm not sure McDonald's can make this particular argument against the teenager's suing them (as discussed in Spider's weblink) but it's something to ponder. If free will is a universal illusion, it would pretty much end all types of litigation (and maybe, in the future, it already has? ;-)