Free will is the ability to act on a volition beyond some algorithmic aggregation of external contexts and events. Our supposed autonomy is contingent on the existence of genuine alternatives to decisions, the possibility of an agent to have acted differently than they had. I will argue that recent science indicates we are unlikely to possess free will in the causal sense that we seemingly experience it, and that more plausible accounts are all-together too weak to be considered free will in the conventional sense.

In Benjamin Libet's Do We Have Free Will(1999), it was concluded that "Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a... readiness potential in the brain", and that "human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act." According to this study there is a consistently recognizable indication of an intention to act before an agent is aware of the intent. If an intent can exist within an agent's mind without their knowledge, then who's intention is it? If "we" intend on an action before we're aware of it, that means our intention precedes our conscious deliberations and supposed justifications. This suggests that the conscious "we" are, at least, not the initial authors of our thoughts and actions.

However, Libet also suggested that an agent could still consciously "veto the act". If we accept this premise, it is still ultimately insufficient to assert genuine free will. The concept of a veto presupposes the existence of some default path from which to deviate. An agent can not be said to possess free will on the basis of some subordinate role in the decision making process wherein they can prevent actions from happening, but cannot freely intend on their own accord. Free will is used as a justification for judging an agent on the basis of their actions. This veto mechanism - wherein an agent must chose between two predetermined options from an an already-parsed decision space is insufficient autonomy to attribute genuine ownership of their actions to them.

Further, in studies of split brain patients, such as David Wolman's A Tale of Two Halves (2012), we can see a clear compartmentalization of different components of the brain affecting behavior in consistent and predictable ways. This indicates that the mind functions systematically; all "decisions" delicately reached by a complex procedure similar to the functioning of other biological systems. While, currently, our understanding of the intricacies of this system is coarse-grained and descriptive, we have no reason to believe it will not improve along the familiar slope of scientific progress.

Modern science has indicated that the classical interpretation of free will is likely illusionary. I have argued that more plausible notions of free will are weak enough that referring to them as free will at all is misleading at best. To claim the existence of some intermediate node in our cognitive process, beyond the reach of scientific inquiry yet still fundamentally crucial to the process itself, is anti-scientific and without merit.