Originally Posted by duga

I understand what you are saying about nature vs nurture and whether or not we have any control over our choices...but then we can start breaking this down into a semantic argument about what free will actually means. To me, free will is simply making your own decisions which may or may not be informed by past experience and future expectation. Hormones and intelligence do play a part in this, but that makes it no less "your decision".

So, choices are firing neurons eventually leading to an action. However, what informs those particular neurons and eventual action are previous choices and conditionings. Let's pretend your brain is a blank slate...you are officially making your first decision ever. What is there to inform it? What choice will your brain make? My point here is just to point out that you can break down every human action to brain chemistry and composition, but that chemistry and composition is dynamic and you may make one decision today but another tomorrow. A computer may be able to predict an action that is inevitably about to occur, but it wouldn't be able to predict what you will do about it tomorrow. Similarly, we can make decisions and actions contrary to our character. To put it simply, your brain can tell you to do one thing and your heart could tell you to do another. Ultimately, the decision is up to you. Free will.

That then directly ties into pride. Let's say you make a hard decision that turns out to be the right one. You might be proud to have made that decision, which will then enforce taking decisive action in the future. In that way, it's completely logical. Some dude invented the wheel, was probably really proud of it, and then felt inspired to make more useful ****. Looking at it objectively like this, it sure makes sense. The illogical part comes in when we apply other emotions to it. Especially embarrassment. Let's say we make a decision we are initially proud of, it backfires, and we are embarrassed about it. Pride is such an enforcing aspect of our minds that our brains seriously can't let it go and inevitably cause ourselves more embarrassment until we can admit we were wrong. That is illogical and a good example of how young we are evolutionarily.