Behaving on Shoulders

​If all behavior is determined by relations between genes/environment and our learning histories, and there is no true freedom to act, then what is the point of making choices?  What are we doing?  How is it that it feels like we are "choosing" to do anything?
 
The science is clear on this point: every behavior we engage in (including thinking!) is a result of our learning history.  Our genes determine how our bodies respond to stimuli (what reinforces or punishes us, motivates us, satiates/deprives us, etc.). 
 
We then respond to that stimuli and the stimuli we do/don't receive afterwards (consequences) determine whether that behavior is reinforced (increases in future) or punished (decreased in future).
 
Complex, seemingly "emergent" behavior is a result of smaller units of these stimuli/behavior/consequent interactions.  So, if I ride a bike, or paint a landscape, or engage in a discussion, all of the little pieces of learned behaviors are a result of past learning histories linking together.
 
Much of our day-to-day behavior is pretty unconscious.  That is, we have learned it so well that we don't even have to think about it.  We ride bikes, driving, load the dishwasher, argue with our spouse, etc. without needing to think about forming the smaller units.
 
... feet on pedals, pressing gas, flipping cup, furrowing brow.
 
Now, we certainly can be conscious of these behaviors. At the minimum we notice them, but more complexly, we label them, categorize them, and make varieties of associations to other stimuli or behaviors and groups of behaviors.
 
Much of this is tied to language, which develops out of our verbal community, all learned through previous interactions.  Set of behaviors and their associations to probable events we call "rules" - whether the mail will come, whether we will get paid for work, etc. 
 
At each level, our behavior is determined by the reinforcement or punishment we have received for that behavior in the past.  New, similar behavioral responses can occur through a process of generalization.  Similarly, our learned behavior can respond to new, similar stimuli. 
 
We play different notes on the same piano. We push on different types of buttons.
 
But always having being reinforced or punished.  And according to current level of satiation or deprivation. Behaviors are more or less likely if we have felt more or less comfortable after doing them previously.
 
Then what is the point of making choices? To "make a choice" is, when conscious, to follow a learned rule. We can generalize new rules by applying logic, also learned, and a function of our current knowledge and cognitive capacity. We must be motivated, which is a function of circumstance.
 
The "point" requires thinking about our thinking.  At this point we are multiple levels of removal from our behavioral learning history.  I push the pedal.  I am riding a bike.  I can ride to the store.  Should I ride to the store?  Should I decide to decide to ride to the store?
 
At each level of consciousness, the variables, the learning histories increase in complexity. At the point of meta-analysis, our grasp of determinative factors is very weak. Through "mindfulness", we can learn to be more aware of the different levels. Yet, total mindfulness would be paralyzing. 
 
Typical therapeutic mindfulness begins with the early steps.  Often, this interrupts the behavioral chain and acts as a stimuli to develop new behaviors of labeling, categorizing, etc. our own behaviors in new ways. Yet mindfulness must be learned! 
 
Likewise, name a "good" or "bad" thing one might do, and there is a incredibly solid theory based on hard science and research to evidence that it was entirely determined.  
 
Like the molecules in a hurricane, it's impossible to know every precise interaction, but the general principals of how behavior works are known. When we self-examine, we're using doppler, measuring temperature and airflow, taking barometrics. We get a vague picture of why we do what we do.
 
When "choose" to do X or Y, we're engaging in the behavior of making estimates based on our past estimating behavior, our current knowledge.  We're operating according to hidden and knowable motivations. 
 
However, even knowledge of motivations are themselves usually estimating behavior applied toward memories (stimulus associations) of what has happened before. 
 
So why do anything at all, if we are confined to forever be playing out physical interactions laid down in corporeal form?
 
Because we have learned to.
 
At a basic level, our basic drives - food, water, sex, comfort, companionship are pushing at us from within.  But immediately beyond that we are social creatures - socialized into vast webs of rules of conduct and behavioral patterns shaped by the contingencies of society. 
 
of these are.  Behavioral principals, while often just the scientific proof for deeper social philosophies and intuitions that have existed for millenia, are, in their substantiated form, incredibly recent - hardly 100 years old. 
 
The logical implications of this understanding of human behavior often runs counter to many mainstream ideologies in human society.  The refutation that we have "free will", or some ability to act outside of our genetic/social learned histories, with some "homunculi", may be prime among them.
 
That so many imagine otherwise and must struggle with the fact, and in some sense have designed their worldview around it, points to the widespread existence of it as a sort of basic mythology. 
 
It pervades our legal, political, religious and economic systems, and imo continues to have very deleterious effects on human flourishing. 
 
To the extent that we talk about "personal responsibility" and blame people who "should have done better", or reward people for "chose to do well for themselves", we design social systems that perpetuate inequality and human misery, withholding opportunity to some while rewarding others.
 
As social creatures with amazing powers of cognition, we can create complex rules about true events in reality and generalize them to plan for optimal outcomes for ourselves and others. But it requires learning and cooperation.  Learning to cooperate.  We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors.
 
We behave on the shoulders of our ancestors. 
 
Which way, left or right?  It feels like I am choosing.  My body and mind is making a choice.  But it is doing so as a result of my body given to me by a mother and father, a lifetime of learning, and through a society that has placed me here.
 
 
I am less "making a choice", than watching the various stimuli formed into verbal or non-verbal behavior as possible outcomes, or rules, then behaving the choice, and then reflecting (maybe) upon that choice via the stimuli that appears in my mind as an account of past actions.
 
We are all watchers. 
 
An interesting thought experiment is to refer to yourself in the third person, and suddenly notice how much the "I" - as it becomes he/she/they - seemingly slips into view as a behaving body within reality.
 
It is no longer outside, acting almost magically,  but firmly connected, intertwined with a world no longer separate but inseparable. 
 
He is typing this sentence.  He is pressing "reply"  Why?  He really had no choice.