If I understand your argument—and I’m not sure I do—it depends on the number of possible states being finite, which you said earlier need not be the case.
As a counterexample, suppose the set of all possible states is represented by the set of all nonnegative integers {0, 1, 2, 3, …}, and state n transitions to state int(n/2). Thus, 0 → 0, 1 → 0, 2 → 1, 3 → 1, 4 → 2, 5 → 2, etc. Every state is the end point of some transition, and no state transitions into two.
Ok, I retract my claim for the case of infinite systems. It’s more difficult there, but it’s still the case that all the known laws of physics are differential equations with the property that giving the full data on any Cauchy surface gives the complete dynamics. If there’s any interest, maybe this question could be spun off into its own thread.
Either way, even if there is a many-to-one mapping in the dynamics, this doesn’t impact my general claim, namely, that in a deterministic world, the state at any intermediate point in time isn’t relevant to a state at a later point in the sense that there is such relevance in e.g. an inderministic world, where one of a set of alternatives is only chosen at that intermediate time.
@Half_Man_Half_Wit
A few posts ago, you asked me why I thought that the concept of “free will” was uniquely problematic.
Well, let’s review where we are with the arguments in this thread.
You have asserted, absurdly, that in a Deterministic universe the brain is not the proximate cause of my decisions.
When called on this you’ve doubled down, with the argument that since we can calculate a universe’s state from looking backwards from the future, that means the prior events can’t be said to be the cause. Note that you could use the same logic to claim no event ever in Determinism causes any other: an acorn landing in fertile soil didn’t cause an oak tree to sprout because we can look backwards from a rotting tree stump and calculate that a tree was once there.
Not only is this ridiculous and obviously flawed on its face, it’s fighting against the very definition of Determinism which is defined as saying State A determines State B (whether you can calculate State B is irrelevant).
And the whole reason we’re even talking about Determinism in the first place, is because when I have asserted that “free will” is incoherent and has zero explanatory power, the best you could do was try (ineffectively) to claim that Determinism is also incoherent and has no explanatory power.
Embarrassingly bad arguments, frankly. But more importantly, nothing of substance here, just games.
So, yeah, this is why free will is “special” among modern philosophical concepts. Because this is what defending this concept looks like.
(Just parenthetically, I wanted to note that this counterexample doesn’t work, since the system can’t reach its initial state under its own dynamics unless it has been initialized in a higher-order state earlier, which state it however can’t reach under its own dynamics unless… And so on. I suspect something of that sort is true for any such example, requiring something like Poincarré recurrence for valid system behaviors that need no external setting up, but it’s not as obvious as I first thought, and I won’t belabor the point here.)
If we’re going to review anything, let’s at least try for some semblance of accuracy. I have claimed that in a deterministic universe (actually, a block universe), your intention/brain state (for the moment eliding the distinction here) doesn’t originate anything. I then haven’t ‘doubled down’ on that, I have patiently tried to explain what seems to be a more challenging point to you than I had anticipated.
But really, it’s quite simple: a random choice is significant to whether a given outcome occurs, because without it, either is possible, and only that choice realizes one or the other. But given determinism, your intention has no sich significance, because which option comes to pass was fixed long before your intention is ever formed, or indeed, your brain ever comes into existence. That’s what I meant when I said, it’s just along for the ride.
There is a clear and obvious distinction here—which, one suspects, is the reason you’ve elected to ignore this point, repeatedly. But that distinction is all I was pointing out
No. I have made the argument that the only real problem with free will is the infinite regress at its base, and further, that this problem is shared by causality and random choice—determinism is a separate issue: causality, free will, and randomness are about how things happen, while determinism describes the pattern of their occurrence (things could be deterministic without there being such a thing as causality, for instance, in the case of Malebranchian occasionalism). But this is a side issue.
So far, you haven’t offered up anything against my arguments (other than invective). Neither have you expanded on any of the additional problems you claim there are with free will.
So perhaps, rather than bad-mouthing my arguments, you could instead try and engage with them. Perhaps then we might have something actually approaching a debate.
I said that the brain is the proximate and necessary cause of our decisions. Then you directly retorted to that point with the idea that the brain cannot be the origin of my decision and so on.
If you’re now saying that those two statements actually aren’t in opposition, then you’re conceding that the whole tangent was a complete deflection from the original point I was making.
Are you now agreeing that the brain is, of course, the proximate and necessary cause of my decisions?
This is completely consistent with my summary, so I don’t know why you’re starting this with “no”.
Your defense of the coherency of the free will concept has been entirely about trying to claim that an alternate model is also incoherent.
And again, the infinite regress is not some demonstrable phenomenon we actually see and need to explain. The infinite stack of wills has been wholly invented to avoid the obvious lack of explanatory power. “How can the will not be caused by prior events or states?” “Well, there’s another will that causes that will!”
If we’re gonna play 'I said, you said, here’s the relevant exchange:
So, you said that intention is important because it decides your life course, which I disagreed with, because it actually doesn’t. And well, it doesn’t.
Furthermore, here’s what you were reacting to:
So I was quite clear from the start what I was talking about: intention that makes a difference for the future course of the universe.
It’s inaccurate in leaving out the part where I argued for what the real problem of free will is, it’s incorrect in implying that I claimed free will has zero explanatory power when I just before gave examples of phenomena explained by positing free will, and it’s wrong in claiming that the issue was between determinism and free will, rather than causality and free will.
Further, it implies, as does your most recent post, that I was seeking to defend free will, while I have been quite clear in that I neither defend nor criticize either free will or any of the other options regarding how stuff happens, but merely point out that we’re in the same boat regarding the metaphysics of what makes things happen no matter our tastes.
No, it’s an inference from what we see happening, like the infinite chain of causal links is.
‘Causes’ is kind of wrong here, as it exhibits a metaphysical commitment, but still—this is just the same story as, ‘How can there not be a prime mover that initiates the first cause?’ ‘Well, there’s another cause prior to it that causes that one!’
That’s not the relevant exchange, the relevant exchange is the one using exactly the words we’re debating right now:
Ignoring for now the superfluous “on your view” because I have never said such a thing, the critical thing is this whole tangent was a response to me directly asking you whether the brain is the proximate cause of our actions.
Then, when I summed up your position as disagreeing with this claim, you got upset because even you can realize how absurd a position this is.
So I’ll ask again and pray that I don’t get a waffly response that does everything but answer the question:
Do you agree that the brain is, of course, the proximate and necessary cause of my decisions?
They are not the same thing at all.
The chain of cause and effect is something we make use of every day. It’s usefulness is verified millions of times over.
Yes, it assumes that the universe really is ancient and did not appear, fully formed, 5 milliseconds ago. But all empirical reasoning relies on that same assumption. It’s not a unique requirement of Determinism.
And yes, it cannot explain the initial state of the universe. Nor does it need to. That’s not part of the model.
To call this a flaw of the model would be to make the same logical error as the YECs, who say that the fact that evolution can’t explain abiogenesis invalidates evolution.
It’s really kinda pointless to try and revise the history of this conversation when it’s all right there to see: the origin of this issue is you disagreeing with my claim that there’s “no intention that has any part in shaping the course of the universe” in a block/deterministic universe. Do you still disagree with that?
‘On your view’ was meant to refer to a deterministic, causally closed universe, which I took your view to be. If it’s not, please clarify. That view, I had argued, (which again was what spun off this tangent) contains no intentionality that has any significant impact on the future course of events—which you disagreed with.
So even there, all I’m trying to do is point out that the whole ‘proximate cause’ thing is irrelevant, and that the real issue is whether there is any intention that has any significance to the future course of the universe.
It’s a bit rich to huffily demand me answering your questions when you’ve spent most of the discussion so far evading or ignoring my points.
Again, the question is beside the point. We were debating whether there is any sense in which your intentionality has any significance to the future course of events. Clearly, your brain can be the ‘proximate cause’ of your actions without having such significance (depending somewhat on what you mean by the term, you never really specified), just like driving across km 99 of a straight road can be the ‘proximate cause’ of driving across km 100 without having any significance for the direction.
But just as well, you brain can have such significance while being a ‘proximate cause’, if there are prior to some brain event multiple possible ways of continuing into the future, one of which is made actual by that brain event. So again: the question is entirely irrelevant.
No. We make use if the fact that the universe shows constant regularities; whether those are due to causal mediation or, say, the interference of a Malebranchian deity doesn’t make any difference.
Additionally, ‘usefulness’ does not imply ‘truth’. And furthermore, the notion of free will is surely appealed to on a regular basis, as well.
I agree. The problem is that you require that the same issue at the root of the notion of free will must be resolved before it can be appealed to—but if we can accept a lacuna at the foundation of causality, why not an equivalent one at the foundation of free will?
I also have trouble saying yes to this. If we speak of a block-universe then in my opinion the relationship between cause and effect, and by extension the concept of choice or decision, is reduced to an illusion.
~Max
Likewise, on a view like Occasionalism (not that I give it much credence otherwise), the brain isn’t the proximate cause of any action, God is the proximate cause (if that is the right notion) of everything, brain states and all. Or, on a view like Leibniz’ pre-established harmony, while the brain is the cause of an action, the intention isn’t, because while both the mental and physical realms are in synch, neither ever influences the other.
There’s oodles more possibilities; that’s why trying to goad this discussion into some particular narrow frame just isn’t going to accomplish anything terribly productive.
Actually, I have to clarify that a little. I agree that a problem of origin doesn’t necessarily invalidate a notion based on that origin, but that’s not the only problem causality has: there is also the question of how, exactly, by what sort of power, event A makes it such that event B occurs, which, if analyzed properly, again seems to contain an infinitary issue, as argued previously.
I have no problem answering that question: Yes I still disagree with that statement.
Now, back to the question that I asked first, indeed that I’ve asked four times already.
Is the brain the proximate and necessary cause of my actions?
Of course we both know by now that no answer will be forthcoming because:
I clarified this for you back in Post #92. I said “[I] make no claim about whether the universe is Deterministic (I suspect it isn’t but it’s just a suspicion, I don’t think the data is clear enough yet)”.
I’ve been consistent on this. I think that “free will” is an incoherent concept whether or not the universe is deterministic. So I’m fine with talking about how “free will” makes no sense in a deterministic universe, because it makes no sense in any universe (and, likewise, making choices makes sense in a Deterministic universe, and is causally linked, because making choices is causally linked by definition, by what we mean by “choice” – a determination, made for reasons).
The focus on Determinism’s supposed flaws is something of a deflection, on your part, from what is supposed to be the thread topic.
Even if hypothetically, you came up with a good argument against Determinism, it would still do nothing to support the claim that “free will” is a meaningful concept, let alone that it actually exists.
Nope.
Our understanding of cause and effect leads us to make millions of accurate predictions every day.
A model that tries to explain events in terms of deities makes zero* accurate predictions, and is Occam’s vulnerable.
* Some would argue that “No, belief in a God predicts things like an orderly universe that follows laws” or some such. But this is a misconception of what is meant by “prediction” in this context. A prediction has to be “surprising”; it has to be something that we were not already aware of.
Both parts of this sentence are flawed.
In the first part, we are not talking about some issue at the foundation of causality. As I say, Causality makes no claim about whether time is finite or infinite (or nested or something we haven’t conceived of yet), let alone trying to explain the state at t0 if time is finite.
How anything came to exist at all in certainly an interesting question (perhaps *the* interesting question), but it does nothing to refute or harm Determinism if we never find an answer to that question.
And the analogy again: the lack of a verified model for abiogenesis is not “a lacuna at the foundation of evolution”. Evolution starts with reproducing organisms with genetic information. Abiogenesis is certainly interesting, but outside of the scope of the theory of evolution.
In the second part, it is not some lacuna at the foundation of free will; the whole chain is a complete fiction.
Q Why did I eat the pie?
A Because I enjoy pies.
Q Why do I enjoy pies, doesn’t something that isn’t my will have to cause that will?
A No, because…there’s something that’s still will that willed it. And…that was also willed by some other will, ad infinitum, no room for “causes”. Please don’t ask any further questions.
Really? So you’d also say it was an illusion that the chainsaw cut down the tree, the tree fell because of the total state of the whole universe?
I am not trying to say the chainsaw is solely responsible, nor that the fact a chainsaw happened to be there wasn’t itself caused by other events. Merely that the local effect of the chainsaw is critical.
Or, to use another analogy, if I tumble a set of dominos, sure, you could say domino number 10 falling over was obvious, calculable from number 1 falling over. But the effect of domino 6 is still critical. It’s not an “illusion”. Without domino 6, domino 10 stays standing (assuming well-spaced dominos 
).
But the chainsaw did not cause the tree to fall; in a block-universe there is no relationship between cause and effect. As a matter of linguistics the verb “cause” only makes sense when the subject pre-dates the direct object; yet in a block-universe, all events past and present exist simultaneously. If time exists outside of said universe, for example if it is a construct or simulation, then whatever caused the block-universe to exist in the first place, if anything, is the proximate cause for any event or data existing inside said universe.
You can speak the same way of a movie, it is not metaphysically sound to say the lumberjack caused the tree to fall when both the lumberjack and the tree are actually drawings on a roll of film. The felled tree and the upright tree coexist simultaneously, and both slides were “caused” by a machine that produced the film.
~Max
That’s not the case.
I think you are thinking of a literal “block” and imagining the block universe as entirely static.
However, the block universe includes time, it doesn’t invalidate it. It is still an unequivocal fact that in the tree’s reference frame, the event of, say, the chainsaw being turned on happened before the tree fell. The time dimension still exists.
I’ve already explained why a roll of film is a bad metaphor for the block universe.
But let me try to put it to you another way.
Imagine a block universe, identical to our own, except that the chainsaw never existed.
It’s impossible, right? How could those felled trees be in that state without the chainsaw being there? It’s integral to the local events that followed.
That’s all I am saying about the brain.
Ok, fine. So then, let’s go back to the two scenarios I proposed. First, a deterministic universe. At t_{-1}, billions of years in the past, it’s completely clear that at t_1, you will have a peanut butter sandwich. Nothing could conceivably change that. At t_0, your brain forms the intention of eating a peanut butter sandwich. Clearly, this intention does nothing to influence the course of events: they were fixed long before it ever came into being.
Then, a universe with a single random event. At t_{-1}, there are two possibilities: that at t_1, you will have a peanut butter sandwich, or, that at t_1, you will have avocado toast instead. At t_0, you throw a coin, which produces a genuinely random outcome. Based on that, you choose the peanut butter sandwich. Clearly, here, the coin toss has a significance to the future course of events: without it, there are several open ways for events to unfold, and only tossing the coin fixes which of the alternatives occur.
Do you agree that the coin toss has a significance to future events that your intention lacks in the first example? Or are both the same to you?
If the latter, do you also think that driving down the only possible road is the same thing as choosing one direction at a fork?
And which I’ve answered at least twice; it’s not my fault you don’t like the answer. But just to recap, the question doesn’t achieve what you’re trying to do, because it’s irrelevant to the issue at hand, which was to determine whether there is intentionality that has some significance to the course of future events in a deterministic or block universe.
In a block universe, you would not call the brain the proximate cause of an action, as all there is is a ‘static’ quilt of events, which we traverse sequentially. Think of a film, say an animated one of a vase being tipped off a table: the illusion of motion, and the illusion of the hand causing the tipping of the vase is due to us seeing the events in sequence; but it’s not the case that one frame of the film causes the next.
In a deterministic world, you might want to call the brain the proximate cause (a still undefined notion, I recall) of one’s actions. But the brain still would not have any significance to the future course of events.
On a Malebranchian view, again, the brain causes nothing; God does, both the brain-state and the subsequent action.
On a view in which there is real free will, the brainstate might be the proximate cause of your actions, and be significant to the future course of events.
So you see, all sorts of possibilities are open. I can’t answer your question in general because it doesn’t have a general answer; it depends on what metaphysics you want to propose. So the only possible answer I can give—and have given, repeatedly—is to try and explain to you that it’s the wrong question to ask.
You keep making claims like this, but despite my repeated urging, have yet to actually explicate where, exactly, you think these problems arise.
I’ve repeatedly clarified for you that I’m not making a positive argument regarding free will, nor am I arguing that my pointing out the issues of causality (which isn’t the same thing as determinism, another thing I’ve been pointing out to no avail) makes free will any more reasonable. I’d appreciate it if you stopped insinuating otherwise.
Again, this is just false, and makes me suspect that you’re not quite clear on what the notion of causality actually includes. That we’re making accurate predictions merely needs for there to be stable regularities, not for there to be causal relations. Causal relations may be posited to explain why there are such regularities, but any other explanation would do just as well. So the fact of our predictive success simply does nothing to adjudicate between, say, relations of cause and effect or the actions of Malebranche’s God; in particular, causality is not required for making successful predictions.
Sure, but we want to explain how stuff happens. So if B happens, you say that it does because A caused it. But that really tells us nothing at all if A’s happening is, in turn, left mysterious. It’s the same as saying ‘because God willed it’. Without knowing anything about God, what have I learned? It’s just a great, big, ‘stop asking questions’.
Also, even in A causing B, there is an infinite regress, as clarified in my last post you apparently missed: what is it that makes it such that A is a B-causing thing? And what is it that makes that further thing such as to make A B-causing? And so on.
So the analogy with your treatment of causality would just end here. Why did A happen? Because B caused it. And then we’re done. You’re happy with that in the case of causality; but for free will, you want to go further. This does lead to unanswered, and probably unanswerable, questions. But so, too, does it in the case of causality. Only those questions, you don’t want to admit.
Huh? Why would it be impossible? It would not be re-interpretable in terms of causality, but I don’t see why that would be a problem.
I mean, consider computer games: usually, when a character opens a door, they approach it, push against it, and it swings open. That’s the ‘causal’ view. But sometimes, it may occur, as it happened recently in a game I was playing, that the animations are out of synch: a character moves through a door, with the opening motion only occurring afterwards. That’s because the opening motion doesn’t actually cause the door to open: the computer ‘causes’ both. In that sense, a simulated reality would essentially be a Malebranchian world.
So I don’t see what would be impossible about your example, either. From the point of view of an inhabitant of such a block universe, they’d see a cut opening in the tree, growing wider, until the tree toppels over. That might seem weird, or even magical, but wouldn’t be logically contradictory. One could certainly program something like that into a simulation…
Perhaps think of it like a quilt that has some patterns. You might expect the pattern to continue, giving ‘natural laws’, and apparent causality, but there’s nothing that says it has to—the pattern could radically change from one vertical slice to the next, disrupting all apparently lawful/causal behavior. So there’s nothing wrong in principle with trees just toppling over by themselves (apparently).
Yes, in a hypothetical sense, the fact that I will have a peanut butter sandwich is entailed in the initial state of the universe, because my thought processes are also entailed in that initial state.
“Significance” isn’t the way I’d put it. I would agree that in the latter case it is no longer a deterministic universe and the state after the coin flip is no longer entailed in the initial state.
You haven’t, you’ve danced around it. And when I said you disagreed with the statement, you accused me of misstating your position. You are all over the place on this and it’s sad.
No, in the physical universe one frame does cause the next. The block universe is not a model that is in contradiction of cause and effect.
And we can see this by the fact that we can make accurate predictions about our future.
A better analogy for the block universe might be a high-rise building, where each part of the structure plays a role in maintaining the structure. It’s a fixed structure but each part still plays a role.
Of course we would. Bear in mind we don’t know if the universe is deterministic at this point (and at certain points Western philosophy has leaned more towards it being true). It didn’t affect our ability to interact with the world and talk about e.g. chainsaws cutting down trees.
Again “significance” wouldn’t be my choice of words, but I would broadly disagree with this. This would be akin to saying the second floor of a building has no "significance"to whether the third floor collapses or not.
That’s simply not true.
From my very first post here I have stated that “free will” is ill-defined and has no explanatory power. It’s “not even wrong”.
I would disagree with that.
If we’re talking about a God that set the universe into motion and then sits back…then that’s still causality, the starting impulse is besides the point.
If we’re talking about a God that mediates everything, every interaction , then that description is Occam’s vulnerable – all of human experience and understanding only works because a God pretends as if there’s cause and effect for every particle of the universe, every time.
No, it tells us what caused B, which was the original question.
Again, yes, if you go all the way back to the big bang then causality draws a blank.
But there’s a big difference between a model of the universe which can’t explain everything (Causality) and a model which cannot explain anything (free will).
No, we’re done when we say we’re done. We can explain why I enjoy pie in terms of my neurology, my culture, human evolution etc etc.
Once again, the only point at which we need to stop is at the big bang. If you really think that undercuts the use of causality then you’re in “what the bleep do we know” territory.
The point was that we cannot conceive of a universe with the physical laws of ours and the chainsaw not existing. The chainsaw was the effect of the manufacturing process at the chainsaw factory. And it was the cause of the tree being felled.
Sure if you just throw out physical laws and self-consistency then anything can happen. Donald duck can show up and kick the tree down.
OK, great—that’s all I was saying when I said that there’s “no intention that has any part in shaping the course of the universe” in the case of a deterministic universe. Hence, to your question prompting this exchange:
It seems that we’re agreed that there is no intention in such a universe of the sort that influences its future course—which is what many people would require of intention being properly intentional.
The notion of ‘proximate cause’ entered into this thread after you proposed the ‘cogs’ analogy, arguing that the motion of one cog is necessary for the motion of the next, which I tried to deflect, because it’s misleading—it doesn’t get at the relevant notion I’ve later termed ‘significance’, i.e. that in the determination of the state of the universe at t_1 (let’s call it s_1), the state of the universe at t_0 is indispensable. In a deterministic universe, there exists a function f such that f(s_{-1}) = s_1, where s_{-1} is the state of the universe some billions of years in the past.
But in a universe with a random event at t_0, which leads to either the states s_1^A or s_1^B being realized, this doesn’t exist; at most, we have f such that f(s_{-1})=(s_1^A,s_1^B). Then, you need to introduce s_0^x, where x\in{A,B} signifies the outcome of the random choice, into the mix to make the state at s_1 fully defined, leading to f(s_{-1},s_0^x)=s_1^x. That’s the sense of significance I meant that intention in a deterministic universe doesn’t have. This sort of intention then doesn’t have any part in shaping your life course, it doesn’t facilitate a choice between alternatives.
That is why I answered your first sidestep into the notion of ‘proximate cause’ by pointing out that this isn’t the relevant notion—rather, it’s what provides the ultimate origin of your life course, the outcome of your action at t_1. I’ve been completely consistent in that argument.
That’s a metaphysical stipulation. It’s false in several possible models of the universe. Let me just list a few:
So you see, the condition of being able to predict events is actually a very weak one, and in no sense requires it to be the case that ‘one frame causes the next’. In fact, in any but the totally random case do we have some predictive power—simply because the data the universe yields will be compressible. And even in the random case will there be arbitrarily long stretches of predictability. Nothing about this requires causation; all it requires is patterns.
So no, I can’t just give an answer to the question of whether the brain is the proximate cause of any action. It is, on some metaphysical models, and it isn’t on others. And that question is largely orthogonal to the question actually under discussion, namely, whether there are factors that have significance in shaping the future course of events, and whether intention is such a factor in a deterministic universe (or even an indeterministic one where the indeterminism comes from random choices). That, we’ve seen, can be unequivocally answered in the negative.
Yes, you’ve stated that, but haven’t actually supported it by argument, nor have you reacted to my attempts at reconstructing your argument, or at my pointing out the issues for which free will does have explanatory power. I think your initial argument is essentially this:
But this clearly doesn’t work, as I pointed out. It assumes that the only way to get indeterminism is by introducing a random event, but indeterminism just means that there are several possible options open for continuing, not that you must choose between them randomly. You could also choose between them intentionally—there is no actual dichotomy of ‘things are either determined or random’.
It’s there, I think, that the supposed ‘incoherence’ of free will is intended to attach: ‘free will’ needs to be both determined, yet open—there must be one definite choice being made, yet that choice can’t be set by any external agency, as then it would be that agency, not the will, that ultimately made that choice (note the emphasis on ‘ultimately’: this is one issue where you’re inconsistent in your critique, you require that free will must be followed through to the source, but don’t demand the same of causation). This leads to the proposal of the will being sui generis, determining itself—which then leads to the by now familiar regress.
Against this, I haven’t seen you propose any new arguments, but merely repeating that free will is incoherent and that it has other problems—but I haven’t found any in addition to the above. So all I’m really aware of as a problem is the infinite regress—which, of course, is a very real and potentially fatal one for the notion of free will. But if you see additional problems, please point them out.
The appeal to Occam’s razor here is misguided—it’s a principle that allows selection between different empirical hypotheses to allow testability; it’s mum on metaphysical issues. You could waffle in the direction of preferring more simple metaphysics, but that’s just a matter of taste.
And again, that’s just you being inconsistent. If you’re allowed to point to B as causing A, and have that description be completely satisfactory, then I can just as well point to my will as being the reason for me having a peanut butter sandwich, and have that be completely satisfactory. But in the case of the will, you don’t want to accept that, and want to chase the reasons for why my will was that particular way, which either leads outside of the will, or into infinite regress; that in the case of causality, you prefer to accept it as given, and don’t want to chase the reasons for why A was the way it is, is your prerogative, of course, but again, a mere matter of taste.
In other words, you asking why the will was such that it led to me having a peanut butter sandwich is exactly the same as my asking why A was such that it caused B. You’re ready to accept a fundamental mystery at the Big Bang; you could just as well accept a fundamental mystery at the origin of the will. There’s always a black box in there somewhere. You’re fine with one for causality; you’re not fine with one for free will. But that’s just preference; you can’t pretend that this encapsulates some deep metaphysical truth.
As for the allegation that free will can’t explain anything, I’ve given at several points now examples of issues where free will has explanatory power, e.g.:
You haven’t reacted to them, but ignoring a point doesn’t make it go away.