The determinism syllogism

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#1
Bones
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Premise 1  Every human choice or action is driven by past events. 

Premise 2 We do not control past events. 

Conclusion 1 Human free will does not exist. 

From my perspective, the syllogism seems simple to the point where it is irrefutable. What do we think?
#2
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@Bones
Premise 1  Every human choice or action is driven by past events. 
Or free will?
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#3
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@Tarik
No, all actions occur because of something which happened in the past. 
#4
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@Bones
1. Human choice or action is driven by internal data manipulation, resultant of past events (acquisition/conditioning).

2. Past events were........ And exist only as record or memory, which we control.

3. All decisions are made upon the above basis.....So all barring physiological malfunction, it is impossible to function spontaneously.


Therefore, from my perspective, "free will" amounts to the ability to internally make informed choices, without external interference.
#5
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The past events actually exist because we exist. We have the right to determine what past events would happen by existing in a certain state, and if we have the right to control the past, we could possibly control the future.
#6
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@Intelligence_06
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is wrong because it falsley assumes that particles do not have mass until they are observed
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@Bones
Premise 1  Every human choice or action is driven by past events. 

Premise 2 We do not control past events. 

Conclusion 1 Human free will does not exist. 

From my perspective, the syllogism seems simple to the point where it is irrefutable. What do we think?
I see no logical flaws in your argument.
#8
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@Bones
No, all actions occur because of something which happened in the past. 
Prove it.
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@Tarik
You had no say in you being born.  It  occurred because of something which happened in the past. 
#10
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@FLRW
There is an argument of internal versus external free will - that is why I no longer consider myself a hard determinist.
#11
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@FLRW
For example, though you do not choose whether you prefer one thing to another - you can choose to go against that preference - while could argue that ultimately leads one back to another preference which you did not choose, you ULTIMATELY did go against a preference. So though libertarian free will is quite silly, I think that this form of "Will" is still something that humans have. As we do see people who change principles and such, such things are caused by external events, and internal thought - sometimes you choose something consciously without subconscious thought -as the the fact that the experiments I have read are not ALWAYS able to read subconscious neurologic activity before the action happens, just most times.

This would suggest that while what we perceive as "free will" does not exist, we have some type of control over our actions. The question is to what degree
#12
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@FLRW
Some religions and practices say you do pick when you are reborn. 
#13
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@FLRW
You had no say in you being born.  It  occurred because of something which happened in the past. 
Thanks for bringing up my parents in their intimacy, that was a mental image I definitely needed lol, but anyway so what about that thing which happened in the past why did that occur? Because of free will.
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@Theweakeredge
There is an argument of internal versus external free will - that is why I no longer consider myself a hard determinist.
Indeterminism (not subject to cause and effect) would be indistinguishable from entirely random and almost certainly lacking in utility. Random events are incompatible with "choice". The alternative is determinism which is incompatible with "choice".
#15
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@Theweakeredge
This would suggest that while what we perceive as "free will" does not exist, we have some type of control over our actions. The question is to what degree
We appear to have full control over our voluntary behavior. This does not make freewill other than logically incoherent. 
#16
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@FLRW
You had no say in you being born.  It  occurred because of something which happened in the past. 
Well stated.
#17
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@secularmerlin
That doesn't disagree with me - I agreed that our traditional sense of free will does not exist - were you reading? You even quoted the section that I said "Free will doesn't seem to exist" - please read before attempting to refute me again.
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@Theweakeredge
It qasnot an attempt at criticism or even necessarily rebuttal. I was trying to answer your question in regards to the degree to which we control our actions. 
#19
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@Bones
Premise 1  Every human choice or action is driven by past events. 

Premise 2 We do not control past events. 

Conclusion 1 Human free will does not exist. 

From my perspective, the syllogism seems simple to the point where it is irrefutable. What do we think?
There are some issues with how you drew the conclusion as well as semantics of the word 'we'.

So, premise 1, even if proven to be true, doesn't exclude other factors in the choice-making process. It states that past events are part of it.

Premise 2 doesn't make clear who 'we' are because if one individual was or wasn't in control of certain past events it doesn't necessariy equate to 'we' being or not being in control as a whole group. Equally, even if 'we' the collective were in control in a hive-mind type thing, free will for the individual surely would be significantly limited.

The conclusion implies you had a premise specifying that free will is or isn't contingent on something (such as control of past events, which is probably what was implied) however the direct way you linked premise 1 and premise 2 to the conclusion isn't irrefutable at all, it's inconherent based on written words in your syllogism. You maybe needed a first conclusion to that syllogism to use as a premise in a future one, then you may evolve it to draw the conclusion you had there (with another premise on the new one).
#20
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@RationalMadman
So, premise 1, even if proven to be true, doesn't exclude other factors in the choice-making process. It states that past events are part of it.

Premise 2 doesn't make clear who 'we' are because if one individual was or wasn't in control of certain past events it doesn't necessariy equate to 'we' being or not being in control as a whole group. Equally, even if 'we' the collective were in control in a hive-mind type thing, free will for the individual surely would be significantly limited.
So perhaps a better syllogism would be 

Biology + circumstances = behavior 

#21
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@secularmerlin
Can you expand each premise and the conclusion?
#22
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@RationalMadman
Sure.

Biology = everything about you mechanically. Genetics, organ function, biochemistry etc but also any genetically coded behaviors and any behavior predicated upon our physical form.

Circumstances = everything that has ever happened anywhere at any time and also "before" time if that even has any meaning up to and including this moment. Your biology is actually a subset of your circumstances and could technically be left out but I like having the a + b = x structure for the argument.

Behavior = the subset of all things you are or have ever been physically capable of doing that you have actually done or are currently doing. By extrapolation also all the things you actually will do but that is an unknown quantity so let's just stick with past and present. 
#23
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@secularmerlin
This thread spoke about a syllogism and asked if it was irrefutable, it didn't say we are generally discussing free will.

Free will comes down to whether teality is scripted fate or random at its core, in my opinion. See, even if reality itself is semi deterministic, if it's random at the core than will is free because god itself is incapable of full control then.

#24
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@RationalMadman
Events which are not concordant with cause and effect are by and large devoid of utility. If that is what you mean by random then that would seem to be separate from "choice" which I understand requires an informed and purposeful course of action (predicated on previous events aka cause and effect aka determinism).
#25
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@Bones
P1 I have never smoked anything [cigarette, cigar, weed, or any other flammable substance rolled in a paper tube, set on fire at one end, and sucked from the other end. Thus, I have no past event on which to make a choice to never do so.

P2 With no past event on which to make a choice of change, I am not compelled to have control of any change.

C I therefore maintain the free will to never change, or to change. That is the nature of free will, and it need not be based on any past event.


#26
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God will not compel us to do either righteousness or wickedness, and the devil cannot do it. We each have our agency. With very little exception, our blame, or our glory for doing anything belongs to the face in the mirror, and very frequently not to any other cause and effect.  Cause and effect do exist, and we are, individually, part and parcel of its existence and its drive.
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@fauxlaw
I would not expect you to change without a reason to (cause and effect).
#28
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@secularmerlin
Obviously, my example offers no personal past event, the point of the flawed syllogism offered.
#29
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@fauxlaw
You have a personal past and it shapes your attitudes and behaviors. You are only arguing over a matter of degree here.
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#30
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@RationalMadman
@Tarik
@fauxlaw
Consider the following. 

Argument from thought experiment 

Pick a random country. Any country. Notice the process that you are going through. Notice how it feels to make a “choice”. Notice that this, if anything, is going to be the freest choice that you make in your life. You have all the countries and all the time you want to pick a country.
 
Let’s now examine this process. Within the first 3 seconds of being confronted with this question, you were faced with a blank, where nothing occurred to you. After this period of blankness, random countries would pop into your head, and you likely had two or three countries. Let’s say that you had the countries Japan and Australia in mind.
 
There are two things we can observe at this stage.
 
1.     You cannot think of a country you don’t know
2.     You cannot think of a country that didn’t occur to you.
 
The first is obvious. You can’t think that you don’t know. The second has larger implications that you would think, as everything must occur to you before you can consider it. But by using the term “occurring”, is like saying the thought “crossed my mind” or “dawn on me”. The process of something occurring to me is completely random. I cannot control what occurs to me, that is the nature of something occurring.
 
You may still be unconvinced. If I were to ask you why Japan and Australia occurred to you, you may say that “I recently ate sushi, so Japan occurred to me”. Notice that Japan occurred to you as a product of a memory of which occurred to you (note that you did not choose for this memory to occur, it just did). The question still remains. Why did that memory occur to you? Well, you may say something like I enjoyed the taste of sushi. Even so, the question still remains, why did enjoyment have that particular effect on you? Why didn’t you think “God, I had some awful Chinese take away a week ago, and that memory occurred to me, so China occurred to me”. Why didn’t China occur to you on the same reasoning?
 
Nevertheless, psychologists know that if subjects are placed in the hands of a good experimenter exposed to an independent variable, they usually have no idea what is influencing them. If you were to give your business partner a hot beverage to hold as opposed to a cold one, they would more likely cooperate with you and when asked why they did what they did, they would usually, never say “well I was holding a coffee instead of a beer”.
 
We’ve now established that the countries Japan and Australia occurred to you, for if they didn’t occur to you, you wouldn’t have been able to choose them. Imagine that you chose Japan, and I asked you for justification for your choice. Why choose Australia over Japan? When justifying your choice, you will run into the same issue as before. You may say "Well I've went to Australia a month ago so I decided to choose Australia". The question then becomes why did going to Australia have the effect that it had on you? Why didn't you say "well I went to Australia a month ago, let's go with something else". 

==
 
The argument from determinism

 Another thought experiment. If I were to collect every atom in the universe and run it into a simulation which simulates the laws of physics, I could hypothetically predict everything that will ever happen from that point onwards. Why? Well, what other factors can control your movement?  What is outside of your body and disobeys the laws of physics which can affect your choice and movement?