Human Intelligence is an Illusion

[Alan V]

If decisions are made in the brain before we are conscious of having made them, then "we" didn't make them, our brains did this unconsciously, just like processing visual information to identify an object. If we (our conscious self) can't take credit for having made a given choice, then we attribute this choice to an unconscious process. Unconscious processes are natural processes since a vital component of intelligence (as many would define it) is conscious choice. Without it there is no distinction from any autonomic response in the body.

My "unconscious processes" are habits that I spent a long time exerting conscious efforts to make habitual.  Same with the artist in your OP.  Habits don't just happen to us, we very deliberately build up habits by how we pay attention, we select from among them to apply the right ones to the right situations, and we consciously monitor them to be sure they perform correctly.  Consciousness is not out of the loop, although since it works more slowly, it reacts with corrections after the fact.

That makes my habits as much "me" as my consciousness.  If you want to consider how we are determined, you have to look at non-conscious physical processes, instincts before they are overwritten by habits, and reflexes.

Would you consider instincts to be natural or intelligent? What I propose is that humans possess highly evolved instincts masquerading as free will. These instincts (or the parts of the brain associated with them)  react to and process input automatically rather than in response to a conscious choice. Our conscious awareness of these natural responses gives us the impression that our conscious mind initiated them when in fact this impression is false.

Let's say you have several potential responses to a particular stimuli.  You are hungry and have to decide which restaurant to visit.  You may consider prices, distances, menu items, diet, and other variables before you make a conscious decision to go to one in particular.  This process takes time and energy on your part, yet you assert that evolution gave us such an ability to work out our decisions without it being in any way causally effective.  Why would you even want to make such an assertion?  What exactly does it achieve?  Does consciousness as an evolved and causal property of matter bother you somehow?