But if the only evidence you allow to be considered is based upon what we consciously perceive from material behaviour and the concept of time related cause and effect, you will inevitably come to the conclusion that a choice must be a consequence of reactions to past events.
And if you want something else to be considered you need to justify why; we justify accepting evidence of the physical because it has been shown to be consistently replicable, and because it can be investigated to confirm or refute hypotheses; we justify logic because it proceeds inevitably and inescapably from premise to conclusion. If you want to posit another stream of evidence or proof that's fine, but without some justification for accepting it its just postulation.
The fact that we are unable to physically detect any other influencing factors does not mean that they do not exist - just that they are beyond the scope of what we can detect through our physical senses and man made equipment.
It could suggest either of those. You are right that absence of evidence is not, of itself, evidence of absence, but the absence not just of evidence but of unexplained phenomena which need a source leads to the conclusion that it may well just not exist. It isn't just that we can't detect something non-physical in the system, it's that we can't detect any phenomena which can't be explained - there is no evidence of something 'else' providing inputs to the system which would require that non-physical input.
However there is overwhelming evidence in mankind's unique creative and imaginative capabilities which appear to indicate the presence of free will.
I disagree. In the mind-boggling complexity of the human mind's algorithmic development - both individual and evolutionarily - I can't imagine the hubris needed to suggest that isn't capable of any piece of imagination or creativity. The complexity of the interconnections and feedback mechanisms and hormonal variations and multi-faceted influences of the neural network in our brain is almost infinitely more complicated than any individual piece of creativity would require.
The fact that we are able to conceive the concept of free will is in itself an indication that there is evidence of its existence.
No, it's evidence that humanity can abstract from concrete examples, it's a suggestion that free will might be a thing until you actually investigate the concept and it's logically self-contradictory and the evidence doesn't support the idea.
To simply claim that it is a logical impossibility is an easy option based upon a our limited knowledge. The reality may be far, far different.
The point of logic is that it doesn't require specific knowledge it follows deductively. It's not a constraint of the physical world that makes it illogical, it's the conflicting requirements of something being both will and free - the two cannot co-exist. Free is random, otherwise the constraints placed upon it make it not free, and as soon as it's random it's no longer will. Unless you can somehow conceive of a third option between random and determined by prior events? If you can, you get to show the flaw in the logic, but if you can't then that's where you argument falls over. You can claim that there might be a third path, but we don't need to know what it is, we need to know how it works logically to be both non-random and non-determined.
O.
