Very thoughtful post. In fact, I first thought you were asking about what leads us to think in a certain way and to that my answer would have been that our experiences and knowledge put together leads to how we think. That is what shapes us into the human being we are today, plus whatever experience we borrow thanks to our dna that includes years of evolution of our ancestors.
how we think. well let me draw a comparison. Imagine every scenario we think of to be a mathematical equation and then the brain performs mathematical calculations, specifically conditional optimization. Being a supercomputer it can also code the mathematical problems in a visual picture. the computation is just binary information being exchanged between different neurons. It is the most advanced motherboard i know.
Hey thanks for this very interesting comment. So you mean that we're just like robots and our thoughts arise through the interaction with the environment and our own DNA. I have often considered that. The crazy thing is that we have absolutely no free will with this assumption, but our whole life is completely written. With an infinite mathematical intelligence one could calculate all environmental influences and our DNA and predict our thoughts and decisions. What do you mean. That's why I want to focus on the thought process to see if we could steer something with emotion.
You can call us robots, something similar to what singularity would achieve in case of Artficial Intelligence. The thing is we are constantly expanding out knowledge set (through experiences of our own or knowing about experiences of others or fictional work of many authors, the information set keeps expanding for humans). Free will is nothing but how we act under different circumstances, whatever our human code throws out. While I haven't looked at the spiritual angle, I think the spiritual or miraculous experiences we have are again mostly (and again mostly) outcomes of codes thrown out by the brains of other living beings. and yeah i don't think the life is completely written. Because experience aren't written. It is all pretty much a simulation though of very random scenarios.
emotions are often tricky. they can be outcomes in most cases as far as I am concerned. Outcome is a combination of physical and emotional reaction. That's what I think.