@litewave,
litewave !
What completely escapes you is the concept of "domains of explanation". As soon as the word "self" or "you" is evoked in a domain, so too does the concept of "free will", because
persons have meaning only as
self sufficient "agents of actions".
Now there
are esoteric writers who talk of "self" (small "s") as being "mechanical", a condition for "most of humanity", but this point is made in order evoke the possibility, (through "work") of rising to the level of "Self" which escapes the bonds of its mechanicalness. This reifies rather than eliminates the issue of "free will", thereby remaining in the domain of person/will.
The point is that
you too cannot make the claim of "mechanicalness" except by assuming a transcendent position like "Self" which lies outside the standard domain. You fail to do this, and like the esotericists,
must beg the question of determinism (as others have pointed out above).
And think of it in terms of physics : "existence" of "force" say, is limited to domains where there are agentive bodies ("particles", "planets" etc) as functional entities in their own right. In sub-atomic domains such "existence" becomes meaningless, "force" as we know it in a Newtonian sense becomes inapplicable. What
you are attempting to do is keep your "bodies" (you, me, etc) and at the same time argue for the "non-existence" of what gives such bodies functional status, namely "free will".
