that’s another confused idea usually used in support of the freewill argument. we expect that because we may not perceive a pattern, repetition, ordered sequence… or are not able to predict with certainty some future event, that therefore there is no causation at work. and some credibility is lended to this assumption because causation is an inference - not knowledge we gain a posteriori - and so isn’t empirical or inductive. we can never experience causation, so it’s easy for us to fall into the irrational reasoning that it doesn’t exist. but despite this, the burden of proof is actually reversed here; it is up to us to prove that because we perceive no pattern, repetition or ordered sequence, we are not merely faced only with a problem of observation, but something more. the first impression should be that this really is only a problem of observation, and that causation is still working. then, after a little deductive reasoning, we would logically conclude that causation must exist.
consider this; a thing cannot be compelled to change or move without something external acting upon it. not knowing in advance how it might change/move in no way proves that there is nothing causing it to do so. all this proves is that these circumstances cannot be predicted in advance.
now if we say that a thing can compel itself to change/move, and all things consist of composite parts, we have to ask which part of the thing initiated the change. if we have a particle that begins to decay, do we say that each individual electron in the field of radiation that results, simultaneously compelled itself to move? what made the particle that was just moments ago not yet in decay, coordinate all of it’s parts to act as they did? the answer is, there was no singular ‘thing’ to compel itself to change/move… but just a collection or divisable parts that have formed a temporary unity. the unity - the ‘thing’ - does not cause itself to remain as a unity, nor does it cause itself to cease being that unity. it remains as it is until something external to it in space/time affects it through an exchange of forces. and if this holds true for all unities, then no ‘thing’ can be a cause for change/motion in anything else. causation is a mystery force that can’t be observed (e.g., we don’t actually see gravity or electromagnetic force, etc.), so we must infer that it exists because there is no other theoretical alternative to explain the characteristic movement and activity of material substances.
what most here are failing to understand is that when describing freewill, something is assumed; that there is a ‘self’, and that this self is, itself, one of these mysterious forces that acts on things… makes things change/move. but this can’t be true because like anything else, the ‘self’ is just a temporary unity of composite parts, each of which have no causal affect on anything. the body, just like everything else, is subject to the same causation.
so if i say ‘I’ decided to stand up, what actually happened? where is this ‘I’, and what kind of force is it? does the ‘I’ suddenly come into existence after the neuron fires, or does it exist before? does my abstract concept ‘me’ cause the neuron to fire, or does the firing neuron result in me having the abstract concept ‘me’?
there are basically two options here. cartesian dualism or substance monism. everyone here (the freewillists) is operating under the precepts of cartesian dualism, whether they know it or not. all this talk about randomness and unpredictability and chaos is neither here nor there. the question is not how things change/move, or if they change/move, but why they change/move. what things do, and how they do it - their forming patterns, sequences, ordered repetitions, etc., - is not the reason for their doing so. you guys are asking the wrong questions… way the fuck out in left-field somewhere.