... An for a fresh start... describe what the "subroutine/you" is.!!!
It is a sub component or routine within the main RTS. It has full access to "your" memories and very likely much of it also comes from the frontal lobes. (The old "ice pick" operations on them show that much of "your" personallity is made or stored there).
It perceives what is being represented (and continuously updated to closely conform to external reality) in other parts of the RTS. It also can "issue orders" to at least the motor cortex, which is conveniently just forward of the parietal cortex, which is making the RTS. I.e. it can activate / control all of the voluntary mussels of the body. That is how "you" act upon the world. (This control is awkward at first, but later the self just send the request to the cerebellum where learned patterned programs for the movement are stored.)
This self subroutine is quite simple at birth (DNA made, as are your hands, gross brain layout, etc.) to be mainly* a "learning machine."** What is learned is mainly used to modify (make more capable and vastly more complex) the initial self routine, either directly or by changing the content of memory which the self routine has access to. I won't (and can't) get into consciousness, but at least the self routine does have self awareness soon after birth if not before.
... so the issue is... can the subroutine (which is you) make uninfluenced choises.!!!....
The choices are determined ONLY by the self routine, but can be "influenced" by what the self perceives in the RTS representation of the external world. For obvious example, a gun held to your head. Or internal factors, like pain in a tooth, may cause the self routine to chose to issue orders to your finger to dial the dentist’s telephone number.
* It does have some innate knowledge. For example, it knows at birth the correct arrangement of the parts of a human face, some behaviors like to cry if hungry, smile when not, and even some very detailed things about how language must be structured plus where to parse vowel sounds. {Synthesizers can continuously “slide” one vowel into another and all humans (plus a few other mammals) make the hearing switch at essentially the same point.}***
**That includes physical skills like making both eyes point in same direction or later how to walk, etc. as well as how to think, evaluate perceived conditions, etc.
I doubt if I can say much more about it, but ask definite questions that are reasonable and I will try to answer.
***It is hard to condition or get a trained response from less than day old child, but they do get bored by repetition. So if you slide the vowel sound around but do not pass that point it will soon cease to interest them, but cross that point and they will look towards its source again. Even though it is a changing sound pattern, it is still an <a> until it crosses that point and becomes something new, not boring, for example an <e>.
Likewise you can show many proper line drawings of faces and then show one with the two eyes, one above the other, and both to one side of the nose and they stare at it with interest. A new born baby knows the correct geometric arrangement of two eyes, a nose and a mouth even if it has not yet seen a human face.
