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Notes -
I think a better way to phrase it is that it's just a poorly-defined concept that ends up functioning as a motte and bailey. "Illusion" makes it sound like something constantly apparent but untrue, rather than just a confused way of thinking about a concept. In the motte, he can declare that things that happen for a reason are "deterministic" and thus not free will, while things that don't happen for a reason (like the outcomes of quantum randomness) are "random" and thus not free will, and then imply that magic can produce results that are neither caused nor uncaused and thus free will is proof of magic. But then when the time comes to argue the existence of "free will" he doesn't have to do anything to argue that something can be neither caused or uncaused, just that people make decisions. Well yes, I believe that people make decisions, I am a "compatibilist" who thinks that people can make decisions with their brains even when those decisions are caused by prior events. I just think that those decisions are some mixture of caused and uncaused rather than some incoherent third thing that has been arbitrarily associated with magic.
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