How do you know you ever had a choice? I do not mean only if confronted with the question "Coke or Pepsi" but every decision you ever made and will make for the rest of your life. If all things were equal and you were presented with the same decision in a past moment, wouldn't the conditions and all of your physical make up always bring you to the same decision? IF - a condition of "existence" is that you occupy space for a given period of time, then can you unravel time and all of the set conditions for that given decision. I would like to present a case (albeit a very simple one, more of a teaser) for the lack of free will which will absolutely drive you crazy because you live in the moments following the decision, and you can never recreate that moment in which you made the decision. Therefore you are always looking at decisions through the lens of the past, which had a very set list of conditions which can never be re-created? My argument is centered in the premise that you make decisions based on past experiences inside a moment of time. This is not to say this argument takes you to some romantic conclusion that "fate" dictates our lives and "che sera, sera" "what ever will be will be". In fact I believe that the "idea" of free will is what gives us "control" over our lives, which is critical. The element of "free will" which is in our control is the amount of deviance we have instilled for a period of time. If time is consistently moving forward and you and I are building upon experience and making decisions can we really say that we control fate? It is the nature of sequence, your decision to make a given decision is governed by a set of past experience and therefore you cannot change what you will do, you can only believe you are. If confronted with the same condition, at the same time, you will always make the same decision and you do not really control your decisions and your will.
