Trick of the Language?

I get the impression that you feel as though human behavior is completely constrained. That there are ultimately no decisions to make, that we are trapped in doing whatever the (self+subconscious+environment) most "want's"/"has" to do.

The only way this could even potentially be true is if you view time as completely linear and reversible. Not an arrow of time, but a time line. Deterministic and non-deterministic models of reality don't work that way. Deterministic models don't work that way due to entropy (among other things).
Non-deterministic models don't work that way because there is no "set in stone" future.

Well I certainly agree with your acknowledgment of the several contradictions in that statement. However, one appears to overwhelm all the others, namely what agent is it that you believe determines the unfolding course of the universe?

I can actually argue that free will doesn't exist without advocating determinism. In fact I have done so in this thread.

Indeterminacy (I'm reliably informed) exists in many forms, as does unpredictability. Georgeob1 has been particularly assiduous in pointing this out. But as I've said, randomness is not equivalent to freedom.

I'm not sure I can parse your question. Does the universe require an agent in order to unfold?

I'm not sure I can parse your question. Does the universe require an agent in order to unfold?

I believe it does for one who holds that everything that occurs is determined by external agents or causes.

This is the ghost in the machine argument which I've never heard a reasonable account of.

However, those decisions, since there always lurks a motivation which directly or indirectly influences them, are not made freely.

I would also note that to distinguish between "the (self+subconscious+environment)" and whatever the rest of us is supposedly made of is the key mistake here.

Bear in mind that the statement you quoted was made to help explain a rather glib play on words. I don't commit myself to holding determinism as true in all cases, or even any. This discussion has underlined the prematurity of that position for me.

Perhaps you can, but offhand I can't see any basis on which you could actually do so, and didn't detect anything either meaningful or substantial about the matter in your earlier posts. Stating something isn't the same as posing a logical argument for it.

Agreed. However science isn't able to distinguish between them, and that is the critical point with respect to proof. Your beliefs in determinism and materialism are just as arbitrary as are their opposites in theism and free will.

This surprises me in that I had the very strong impression that the opposdite was true: i.e. that you argued forcefully for the postulated non-existence of free will, and the deterministic nature of all human volition.

The reason you haven't heard a reasonable account of deux ex machina is because it is a problem that no longer requires a solution, we don't live in a clockwork universe.
I think that perhaps you are confusing some poetic treatments of "ghost in the machine" like in popular books/movies. Lawnmower Man, The Matrix, Tron et al. That use of the term is a very loose and quasi-spiritual treatment of emergent behavior.

I don't see how you infer from influence down to total constraint of behavior.
How does influence = non-freedom?

Perhaps I should have used stronger language. What I'm arguing is that motivations cause behaviour. So to carry on the line of thought from above, our motivations arise from our personalities, which in turn are formed by genes and environment. In any one moment preceding a decision factors like class, politics, intelligence, body size, ethnicity, gender, sex etc, are acting upon us, guiding and shaping our very next move, and even longterm moves of the kind georgeob1 was talking about a short while ago. Why we choose one thing and not the other depends entirely on causes that either are explicable in the terms above, or are inexplicable- in which case how can you say they were freely made choices?

What I'm arguing is that motivations cause behaviour. So to carry on the line of thought from above, our motivations arise from our personalities, which in turn are formed by genes and environment.

OK so far, but how can you be sure that our motivations are entitirely devoid of independent acts of our will? Many of the examples I gave of diifficult choices and goals achieved do indeed appear to be the results of thoughtful choices that could easily have gone another way and indeed most often do.

Perhaps you have merely moved the issue here to an adjacent category.

Here's that ever present causation creeping back in to haunt us. An understanding of causation is what is at the center of this dilemma.

What would something have to have for you to consider it having agency? Is there any difference between subjective and objective reality?

Free will posits an uncaused cause, and decisions made in the absence of reasons or motivations or desires. This is why I say it is a non-starter.

I'm reasonably sure of this because the phrase "independent acts of will" is a vacuous one when examined closely enough. What would it mean to make a decision based on an independent act of will? It would be a decision devoid of reason or purpose. We don't make these kinds of decisions; they don't exist.

What comprises a thoughtful choice? Is it based on a combination of personal factors of the kind I've previously described, along with social factors like familial and work obligations? In other words is there a reason, cause, or motivation for it? Or is it based on something else? If it's the former (and I can see no way around that conclusion) then the idea of an independent act of will, thoughtful volition, or free will must be rejected. Or else, you must describe what the something else could possibly be.

The fact that you call this suggested exception thoughtful choice is revealing. Thoughtful as in what? Deliberated over? As in considered? Over what do we deliberate? What is considered? Reasons, consequences, and motivations again. What is finally decided upon and why? We decide upon what seems to us to be the most favourable action based upon whatever desires are motivating us most strongly in that moment -and the internal components of what motivates us most strongly are engineered by genes and environment. All that leaves is the external, which again we do not control.

Free will posits an uncaused cause, and decisions made in the absence of reasons or motivations or desires. This is why I say it is a non-starter.

I was referring to the act of choosing among generally acceptable alternatives .. i.e. a choice made when other generally satisfactory options are available; or, alternatively, of choosing a more difficult and challenging path as a means of achieving a distant or unlikely goal, also when less difficult paths are available. In such cases most of do indeed consider these as choices involving conscious volition

Equivalently in the absence of any scientific basis that we can do better than make low confidence statistical guesses about the central tendency of group behavior, you must also prove there can be no variable individual factor involved in such choices.

Here you are merely evading the issue with a tautology.

May I also conclude that you accept Thomas Aquinas' proof for the existence of an intelligent creator of the universe, which is based precisely on this argument?

This is a relatively cogent argument when the only two options on the table are simple inevitability and simple chance.

The reality libertarians (free will thinkers) require is adequate determinism. Now let me try to explain why...
Let's look at the notions of control, agency, and responsibility. These terms naturally have some personification biases, so what do they actually mean in less personal terms.

I will return to this, but in the meantime what would satisfy you as to the definition of "making a decision"?

It seems to me that most philosophical questions these days -- and especially any that deal with what, for lack of a better word, we still call 'metaphysics' -- are about semantics rather than anything like ultimate reality.

If you speak of an event that does not come to pass, what did you speak of? It never happened, so the event isn't real. Is it? Only the prediction of it, or the expectation of it happened. The thing itself never did.

When we consider this, we might realize that most of what we believe of the future is a matter of semantic ghosts that either manifest as reality or evaporate to nothingness. This in turn indicates to me that the debate along these lines isn't really ideal to clarify much.