if everything follows strict physical laws, there really is no place for belief or willpower that comes from "ourselves". what we perceive as willpower are chemical reactions in our brains, products of our past. if some machine that could replicate me exactly (implausible as it might be), under the same circumstances, it would have the exact same amount of willpower as i would.
in that sense, there really is no "self", only a set of complicated circumstances that created this temporary being that exists for a while and then returns to dust.
yet, we have all experienced some situation where by sheer force of will (real or otherwise) we were able to overcome some difficulty or achieve some physical feat. we had to dig deep in our reserves and simply believe that we could do it, singularly focusing on our goal.
if we totally subscribe to determinist theory, doesn't that make us lazy? can we subscribe to the determinist theory yet believe we could influence things by ourselves? can we create intention out of thin air that is totally our very own effort, so we don't feel like we're just messengers in the grand game of life?
well, suppose we are only messengers - suppose one day this someone did tell us we actually were cogs, albeit complicated cogs, but still cogs. the first reaction would be, how do i stop being a cog, dammit? but the "this someone" tells u the harder you try not to be a cog, the more you are fulfilling your destiny as a cog. then you say, i'll do my best to be a cog then. then "this someone" says, great, i expected that from you too.
which leaves us with a no-win answer. does the futility of it all demoralize us? or do we realize we might as well enjoy life to the maximum? does it lead us back to the premise that we might as well do what suits us best and makes us feel best? afterall, there's no point in inflicting unnecessary pain on ourselves just to spite "this someone", as it couldn't have gone any other way anyway.
the way i'm wired (as i know it at the moment), it seems to make me happier that i'd believe i have some way of controlling my destiny. is it possible to know that everything's determined but to believe that we can still create intention, contradictory statements that these may be?
consider if you were to build an optimization machine - we would want it to optimize no matter what kind of consciousness it gained, and in fact, while we don't know the answer it would get to, we'd need to put in programs to make sure it believed it could do so. and this belief makes it the optimization machine we wished for.
