Mind = Brain?

[fr0d0]

By explaining to me how one can be pre-programmed to influences outside oneself (meaning that the nature of these influences is unknown in advance) in any more particular way dan reacting to a stimulus from the outside. How do these "character or desires" know in advance how to respond to specific inputs, like say my question about "actively shaping the causal chain"? Is your diversion pre-programmed?

I'm not really stating anything here, just repeating what Evie has said many times. Everything we do is mechanical in a way because we have no real option than to do what our 1. instincts 2. intellect and 3. outside influences would already have us do. It matters not if the influence is spontaneous or dormant, however that influence affects us determines the choices we make. Likewise our reasoning could be spontaneous - does that mean it cannot also be mechanical and what we always would have reasoned? Do you think an influence is more another agent imposing onto us as agents?

Then what is, according to you, the difference between identity and soul?

Identity is your outward persona, or intellectual picture of yourself. Your soul is your unknowable self. It _is influenced_ by what you choose. It _cannot_ influence you.