Robot cars decide their actions. You can look at the code that makes those decisions, and if it isn’t a mess of NNs you can see exactly how it makes them. They do not discover what their actions are and then “feel like they made a decision”. The code has causal effect upon the world outside the car.
Yes, in the sense of “follow their programming”, robot cars do decide their actions. They cannot suddenly decide to make an action different from what their code, coupled with external inputs, forces them to. There is no top-down causation. People are exactly the same, except that those inputs an programming change the programming on the fly. But that can be also true of robot cars.
A robot car’s code does not force it to do anything. What the code does is what the robot does. As for top-down causation, if things that are made of parts exist, top-down causation exists. It is not separate from bottom-up causation; it is the same thing.
Robot cars decide their actions. You can look at the code that makes those decisions, and if it isn’t a mess of NNs you can see exactly how it makes them. They do not discover what their actions are and then “feel like they made a decision”. The code has causal effect upon the world outside the car.
Why should that be any less true for people?
Yes, in the sense of “follow their programming”, robot cars do decide their actions. They cannot suddenly decide to make an action different from what their code, coupled with external inputs, forces them to. There is no top-down causation. People are exactly the same, except that those inputs an programming change the programming on the fly. But that can be also true of robot cars.
A robot car’s code does not force it to do anything. What the code does is what the robot does. As for top-down causation, if things that are made of parts exist, top-down causation exists. It is not separate from bottom-up causation; it is the same thing.