>>301522I may not have elucidated what I mean by "under the hood" very well. I was simply referring to subconscious processes which are carried out regardless of whether or not the self is aware of them. It is obvious that many biological functions are entirely subconscious and cannot be directly controlled by conscious thought like the rate at which the heart beats. It may be possibly to indirectly control this to some extent but I will get to that shortly. Going back to the topic of subconscious processes, even things that are normally thought of as deliberate actions are subconscious to some extent. As I type this, my mind somehow knows where every key is located on the keyboard and I can type this out without looking at the keyboard and deliberately moving each finger over every letter. I know the order of the letters of the first row of a QWERTY keyboard and can retrieve that knowledge at will. I do not, however, consciously know where all the letters are but I can retrieve them in a roundabout manner by imagining that I am typing something out. For instance, if I wanted to know where the letter 'X' was, I could imagine typing out the word "Xylophone" and seeing where my fingers want to go (bottom row, left side). If I wanted to consciously exert some control over my heartbeat, I can change my breathing or think of things that would normally make me frightened or anxious to increase the rate at which my heart beats. I cannot, however, directly control my heartbeat. There is some kind of process going on under the hood that automatically responds to stimuli and causes physical changes in my body and this occurs regardless of whether or not it is deliberately induced. This occurs at higher levels than core biological functions. Note how people respond to hearing certain words or phrases. Are they deliberately and consciously changing their facial expressions and body language? Obviously not.
So the question is not whether or not there is anything going on under the hood, but to what extent the biological machine that is the human body is controlled by processes that the self or consciousness that one identifies with is unaware of or is aware of but cannot control directly (processes that are going on "under the hood").