Determinism implies that there is no freedom in any part of the process, behaviors and outcomes included.
If you are simply going to assume that, declare it to be so without any consideration of this discussion, and think you are making some kind of point, you haven't read a single post of mine with comprehension.
Because you agreed above that the driver’s decision was already established before the event occurs. So how is it possible that another option exists in regards to the driver’s choice?
That's how the universe determined things.
Do you really need to invent some kind of back story - how the driver learned to stop as well as go, how the driver learned to use the color of a traffic light as a decision criterion, how the driver came to what they are, etc etc - in order to comprehend the situation? Frankly, I doubt it would help you. You're still tangled up in a spurious necessity for supernatural powers in decision making.
So the notion of alternatives only exists in the mind of the driver, and could never be actualized.
Now you are in conflict with observation, as well as reason.
The driver's alternatives and capabilities are observed facts.
Alternatives that are never "actualized" outnumber the few that are by orders of magnitude. Not being "actualized" in the future has nothing to do with their existence now.
The notions in the mind of the driver are irrelevant. People make unconscious decisions all the time, and the example was chosen to reflect that.
That statement is not consistent with a deterministic system.
Nonsense. Of course it is.
What’s laughable is that you can’t seem to grasp the central point that it’s not the differences in the processes that matter, but that their dynamics and outcomes are all predetermined.
I understand it fine. It's a mistake, is the problem. You are wrong about that. The processes matter. The predetermination does not matter.
The root of your error is reasoning from faulty and unexamined presumptions.
For example, in your need to deny the existence of observed capabilities (to get rid of the degrees of freedom involved in making decisions, which conflict with the presumption of freedom requiring supernatural powers) you have made whimsical hash of stuff like timelines and sequences - whatever you need to cover the hash you have made of basic causality and all of your arguments for a deterministic universe in the first place. Future events do not determine present circumstances because they themselves are (pre)determined. It's the other way around - present circumstances and behaviors (pre, if you insist for some confused reason)determine future events. The capability of the driver to decide whether to stop or go - the existence of those alternatives, from which the driver chooses - is part of what determines the future event.
The processes are what matter most.
So you agree that Bolt is being played by his universe, with no more options of the tune he expresses than Geddy Lee’s base guitar.
No.
Pay attention - I have repeated this often enough that further demands for repetition would be trolling:
Bolt is part of the universe.
In this case, Bolt is the part of the universe doing the running, including the choosing of speeds and so forth. That's how the universe determines that behavior - it generates a part of itself called "Usain Bolt", equips this part of itself with the necessary options and capabilities for making all the decisions involved, and so forth. That's how it "plays".
Likewise with guitar players, etc. When you say "the universe plays the guitar", you are correct in a sense, but you are in danger of overlooking how the universe does that. If you declare an actual
conflict between the universe playing the guitar and a guitar player making the decisions and performing the necessary tasks, you are badly confused.
Like I said above, the differences in the processes isn’t the key issue, it’s that they are all determined by the evolutionary dynamics of the whole.
The evolutionary dynamics of the whole are not involved in the examples here - driver and light being the simplest and clearest, btw. We have stipulated that they are deterministic, and strictly follow natural law - that gets us the situation at hand, and the issues at hand.
The differences in the processes are where the differences in freedom of will reside (rocks don't even
have wills).
They are central to the issue.
