If we assume determinism, however, we might say this about any decision.
Not really. The lesion is a single aspect that completely determines a decision.
For most decisions, far more of the brain/mind than just one small, otherwise irrelevant, part can have some influence on the outcome.
But the lesion is clearly different, IF it has a 100% correlation.
Acknowledging some kind of fatalism is one thing, but injecting it into the middle of our decision processes seems to me to be asking for trouble.
When making a decision on something where I know my thought-process is irrelevant, why should I not be fatalistic? There is no decision-making process in the 100%-lesion case, the decision is MADE, it's right there in the lesion.
EDIT: Here's something analogous to the 100% lesion: you have a light attached to your head. If it blinks red, it'll make you feel happy, but it'll blow up in an hour. It's not linked to the rest of your brain at all. Should you try and make a decision about whether to have it blink red?
There is no decision-making process in the 100%-lesion case, the decision is MADE, it's right there in the lesion.
There is no decision-making process anyway, every decision is made, it's right there in the frontal/temporal/occipital/parietal lobe, right?
Here's something analogous to the 100% lesion: you have a light attached to your head. If it blinks red, it'll make you feel happy, but it'll blow up in an hour. It's not linked to the rest of your brain at all. Should you try and make a decision about whether to have it blink red?
The red light blink...
This is part of a sequence titled "An introduction to decision theory". The previous post was Newcomb's Problem: A problem for Causal Decision Theories
For various reasons I've decided to finish this sequence on a seperate blog. This is principally because there were a large number of people who seemed to feel that this sequence either wasn't up to the Less Wrong standard or felt that it was simply covering ground that had already been covered on Less Wrong.
The decision to post it on another blog rather than simply discontinuing it came down to the fact that other people seemed to feel that the sequence had value. Those people can continue reading it at "The Smoking Lesion: A problem for evidential decision theory".
Alternatively, there is a sequence index available: Less Wrong and decision theory: sequence index