to Sam Harris
You say the sub-conscious directs all our decisions and that the brain is an organic instrument that is manipulated by the physical environment. However you have not placed the source of the sub-conscious .
If we presume that the sub-conscious has more than self awareness, it has cosmic awareness, then as in Hindu philosophy, it serves the purpose of analyzing all the incomprehensible possibilities that that inform any decision. The sub-conscious protects our conscious self from the chaos of knowing everything. The sub-conscious sorts out the details so that we make informed choices about the action we take. If there is a will it is in the sub-conscious, and it identifies a self.
When I place cosmic reality into organic being I arrive at the thought that gravity is the conscious act on chaos to manifest the organic life. The conscious self not manifest and formless is the sub-conscious that resides in the biological being which is willfully expressed by the closure of the cosmic awareness , shrinking space into an acceleration that transforms the elemental universe into this very earth. And we on it.
Would that make humans different than other biologic forms of being ?
If material is the expression of intention, (design), energy and matter bound into purpose, then the tools we use to measure the universe only acknowledge 1/2 of all that is. the immeasurable is portion is named Spirit because it is knowable but formless.