Do you mean by the above, that our conscious thoughts feed back into our brain which may produce further thoughts in a circular way? That seems perfectly reasonable.
A feedback mechanism is all mechanistic. I'm not saying there is some initial supernatural force, since that simply makes no sense with the rest of my post. Compatibilist free will is a description of human volition in a deterministic universe.
The problem for me, is that Harris is trying to demonstrate based on Neuro-scientific experiments,that in making a choice, our actions were already predetermined by our brains. so that the conscious mental event and processes of thinking,reasoning,intending,believing or disbelieving and choosing are entirely irrelevant, and had no effect whatsoever on the outcome.
I haven't looked into what Harris is saying, but I think I have a sense for it. You're slightly misunderstanding his position. Our actions are not predetermined by our brains. All the thinking, reasoning, intending, believing, etc, are mechanical cognitive processes that require inputs from a variety of sources external to the brain. It is the vastly complex convergence of all these lines of input that leads to us making a choice. Here is where things get fuzzy. If you have a hundred influences on your choice, including everything from previous experience, blood sugar level, current emotion, as well as the reasonable merits of each item you're selecting between, all these influences converge into your choice. "You" are the one processing all this stuff, regardless of whether or not the processing is causal. You feel the influences going through your brain, emotion spikes when you select a yellow curtain because yellow was your mother's favorite color. Your reasoning is tapped when you select a ford taurus over a ford focus because you plan to have babies in a few years. You pick sesame seed chicken when you go to Panda Express because you've tried all the alternatives before.
Why try to show that the outcome has nothing to do with the mental event?
I'm not sure what you mean here. Again, what you experience right now and at any other time is exactly what is predicted by a deterministic universe. What you experience in real life, I mean. If you think determinism is saying something different, then you are misunderstanding determinism. For your sentence above, the mental event is still part of the process. If Harris was referring to those experiments that showed the decision being formed 700ms or so before the decision reached our consciousness, it still does not mean the outcome had nothing to do with a mental event. The question is,
which mental event? Point to a place in time where your brain is working. Even though the decision may happen a fraction of a second before we're aware we settled on one, that does not mean all preceding deliberation was moot. All preceding deliberation, most of which was conscious, lead to the decision being made.
I agree with with you that there are real causes involved in our choosing,and that must include our introspection and conscious thinking.
Conscious thought and introspection are still physicalist in nature, as studies have proven. Did you read the rest of my post, where I mention the effect of various influences on our thinking?
I wonder sometimes, when Harris gets morally indignant about the 'evils' of religion where this moral indignation comes from?
What Harris sees isn't the individual within each religion. He separates the "idea" from the "people" who hold it. In this sense, the idea-father is the bible. All Christian ideas lead inexorably back to the bible. It is therefore the bible we must analyze. Not according to one of the myriad interpretations that exist, but according to what interpretations it allows. Because if it allows an interpretation, that interpretation will be realized by someone somewhere, due to the complexity of our world. There is a great deal of horrible interpretation allowed by the bible.
To reinforce this point, we only need look at the real world. There are people who commit all sorts of serious crimes using their biblical interpretations as justification. You believe it is their sin that causes them to act that way. But Harris, being a determinist, correctly identifies the primary influence as the bible, with secondary influences being genetic emotional predispositions, cultural influence other than their religion, etc. It is the interpretations of the bible that are used to justify many heinous acts. It is the variable that, if altered, would prevent the heinous act.
So Hussein's victims were just unlucky, and shouldn't think about justice, but should feel better by accepting he could not have done otherwise and consider him to be just behaving naturally like a crocodile would.
I still don't have the transcript to analyze, so I can't be sure I'm accurately representing what Harris is saying. In a determinist universe, justice is every bit as important. In fact, it is arguably more important. See chapter 3 of Carrier's book for an explanation. If it doesn't suffice, I can fill in the blanks. Hussein is responsible for his acts.