Fred, you said,
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While the primitive subcortical and subconscious motivational/emotional neural mechanisms do indeed have tremendous influence on our behavior and conscious perceptions, we nevertheless can consciously and willfully discern, at least to some degree, the influence of these neural mechanisms and exercise at least some conscious and willful control (downward causation).
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This is a good descrption I think of what happens. The area where we might disagree is what happens next.
I would maintain that our intellectual conclusion that we should stay in class today instead of running off to the beach with our friends (as our more primitive emotions are urging us to do) has only as much power to control the decision as the emotional strength we grant it. And that this is an involuntary event. i.e. we will automatically give it the emotional power that our identity (higher level beliefs in the kind of person we believe ourselves to be) allows.
If we fancy ourselves to be serious about the profession we are pursuing we may
feel bad (or less good) when we consider blowing off class. If we are going to school for less noble reasons we may not feel so bad at the prospect and may instead feel good.
But that feeling is what is considered, not the logical alternative itself. I propose that our decisions are made as the result of a summing of these emotional forces. Our logical conclusions have no force themselves other than what our identity (higher level beliefs) grants them in a specific context that must have some effect on our happiness or survival.
And in that sense, our decisions are still therefore "determined". If we are free we are only free to be ourselves, which means that we are free to consider whatever emotional value to our decision alternatives that our identity has established. And of course, the higher level beliefs of our identity were chosen in our past because they also
felt good to our emotional computer.
They could have been chosen with emotional inputs from our intellect but that's dependent again on identity. Some people may tend to harbor only intellectually logical beliefs in their minds. Others may prefer (automatically give more emotional weight to) irrational religious inputs as mandated by the surf God, for example.
But freedom is hardly the best term to use for something that occurs subconsciously.
Margaret