And what is it precisely that you deem to have ducked the issue?
Is it the uncontrollable material reactions of the sub atomic particles in my brain?
Or is it my conscious self which controls my thoughts which I consciously decide to type out on my keyboard?
We've already covered this so many times before. The conscious self, is itself a phenomenological outcome of lower levels of mind, it is not fundamental, it is not irreducible, but rather, it is derivative. The real seat of power and agency lies in lower levels of subconscious mind. Clearly that is not how it feels, for obvious reasons, we are not aware of subliminal preconscious states of mind.
But all these complicating issues are irrelevant anyway as you are still stuck with the basic problem that a choice, however it is made, must either be a consequence of the circumstances that led up to the choice, or it is random and irrelevant.
Try this thought experiment : still yourself down, put out the lights, clear your mind as best you can, and then, after a few moments of calm, try to decide what you will do in the next moment. Then, afterwards, think back at that moment of choice and try to identify the reasons why you made that choice. One thing out of all the possibilities would have emerged as the most urgent thing to do right there, right then. This is what minds are for, this is why brains exist, to resolve competing demands on our resources. Whatever came out as top priority in that moment, did you decide that that should have been top priority, or did it just
feel the most important ? This is where your notion of soul runs of out steam. A soul (or anything else for that matter) cannot be assigning importance to our various urges because in order to do that, there must be some basis on which to prioritise. A moment of choice is a moment of
identifying which issue is the most important, not one of
choosing which issue is most important - that leads to an infinite regress.
