Human Intelligence is an Illusion

[The__Chameleon]

Being bound to programming (or even more fundamental, to process flow in architecture) doesn't prohibit a machine from directing it's efforts.  

In terms of the thing you're discussing, that's the difference between will and free will.  If we have no free will, our cognitive and conscious faculties are an issue of will.  We have will.  That we don't have a free will does nothing to make that will illusory.

I was not arguing that our will is illusory, only that our "free will" is, and that our sense of conscious self-direction is. If there is a nature to our will that can allow it to supersede/overrule (be "free" of) deterministic factors, then that nature must be sourced outside of our mechanical nature and being. Since deterministic factors (variations of the principle of natural selection) dictated how we are "programmed" then our programming is also deterministic and cannot be the source of "free" agency.

If we indeed have the ability to exercise "free" will, and this ability cannot be sourced from "us" (in the physical sense) then is it really "ours"?

Using the word "nature" and "natural" in the Naturalistic context, the following statement should appear self-evident.

If it can be said that the capacity to supersede nature (as in the case of free will) exists then this capacity cannot itself have a natural source.