Free will is an illusion

Thanks for this. Let's go step-by-step:"I must point out that the quote was taken entirely out of context."I have read the book this comes from, The Wanting Seed. I do not at all believe the quote was taken out of context. If you would like to argue it does, please provide hard evidence beyond mere conjecture requiring our readers "read between the lines"."if I were trying to make an argument against free will, Burgess would not make my shortlist of people to quote"Who would make that list?"I don't yet see any metaphysical evidence that shows me how or why the process from observation to reaction is not under our control"What proven, empirical, scientific evidence do you see that shows the "process from observation to reaction" is irrefutably under our control? If you are going to purport that humans have a certain superpower not held by any other animal despite the sharing of a huge majority of DNA, especially with our closest ancestors, and absent the classic "common sense" / "I feel like I have a free will" argument, I feel you should be required to demonstrate as such."the emotions attached to the horrible event are stored in the child's brain for the child to reference in the future," By any logical stretch, this point proves my side of the argument rather than your own. The newborn doesn't, on their own volition, decide to store information surrounding the experience in their memory. The rock experience is recorded in the newborn's neural pathways (and perhaps Bayesian mind) where information is stored that can be accessed in the future. This information includes data on the color, shape, texture, and weight of the rock as well as the speed with which it hit them, the feeling on the moment of impact, and, of course, the accompanying pain. This information is encoded in the memory and grouped with any other past or future experiences with objects of similar nature in similar situations. As the newborn develops, their brain will be able to instinctively react to future rocks. This is where instincts (innate, typically fixed patterns of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli, absent agency) come from.Even if you tried to argue that the newborn does, in some way, have control over the information and/or emotion encoded in its memory from an experience like this, how does the newborn decide what information to store? How does the newborn even decide it was a positive or negative experience? How does the newborn make the judgment that pain is better than pleasure (or vice versa)? How does the newborn file away this experience for future recall along with "rocks" as opposed to "elephants", "space ships", or "chair lifts"? I don't think any logical person, remotely familiar with neurophysiology or psychology would claim these things were willed by conscious agency."Emotions are a complex system of synapses at work in conjunction with fluids being sent throughout the body, it's nothing more than our sense of touch, but we tend to attach pleasant or unpleasant or neutral attitudes on those emotions,"Shockingly, you're again proving my point. Emotions are purely physiological. When people feel they are being influenced by emotions, or tapping into them, they are simply reacting in a purely mechanical way to stimuli."It deals with the idea that just the fact that we realize our emotions do not control us, may help us to have a better understanding of ourselves as individuals. If you find the time to read up on it, give it a looksey, "It is funny that you cite this article regarding self-awareness as some sort of proof of free will, when it starkly contradicts your rock/newborn example vis-a-vis its developmental timeline. Interesting? Sure. Proof that all it describes is not a complex illusion? Not remotely."Of course what one might consider to be reasonable, others may not, the reasonable or logical decisions pertain only to ones self."I could not agree more and wish others on this forum would concur."I have my own emotional reference table, based off of situations and observations unique to me so far as I can see"I agree here, but I would ask: "by what token of free will have you consciousness authored the way in which your emotional reference table was formed and formatted?" Was it it shaped by a rock experience when you were a newborn? Unless you possessed telekinetic powers as a child, the rock hurling toward you was unlikely to have been doing so as a result if your own volition. Your reaction and subsequent storage of information, memory, and experience, were equally not of your own volition.--Any close, or even cursory, exploration of one's consciousness and self experience should reveal the free will is but a mere illusion. You have no more control over the next word that comes out of your mouth/keyboard as you do mine. You cannot be the author of your own conscious desires and, though you can sometimes decide what you are going to do, you can never decide what you will decide you will do. "A puppet is free so long as he loves his strings."Thank you.