Free will and consciousness

[Jim__]

40. We've been over this all before.

At point A you're not thinking about raising your arm, though perhaps you've been presented with a situation that might make you motivated to think of a random activity. At point B the thought to raise your arm enters your mind. At point C you raise your arm.

Where did that thought come from at point B to raise your arm? Up to that point no such thought was in you consciousness. Your consciousness at point B couldn't have chosen to to raise your mind since your consciousness hadn't thought of it yet. That thought had to have entered your consciousness from some place other than your consciousness.

From my response in post30:

... When I read your post about free will, I started to think about free will. My conscious train of thought about free will led me to the question, how can I test whether or not I have free will. That question led me to ask, can I raise my arm at any time. People deliberately perform certain acts - for instance, writing a post - in order to effect other people's conscious thoughts. It works. One conscious thought can follow another in a rational sequence. That does not lead to an infinite regress.

Conscious thoughts about free will follow from reading your post, consciously thinking about your post - namely about free will - my conscious thinking led me to consciously think about testing free will, and then my conscious thinking led me to the conscious thought that raising my arm would constitute something of a test, then I consciously decide to raise my arm as a test. Conscious thoughts lead me from reading your post to raising my arm. I'm placing some emphasis here on conscious thought.

From my post36:

I can make rational arguments:

All A is B.
All B is C.
Therefore, all A is C.

My feelings don't enter into that. Its a rational argument, consciously made; and no matter what mood I am in, it always comes out the same. And I can substitute emotionally-charged words for A, B, and C; the conclusion always remains the same. It's is not determined by emotions, or feelings, or any other non-rational attribute you want to use.

I consider rational arguments a strong indication that we can consciously construct a sequence of thoughts.

The above description is based on my experience. And, as I've stated previously, e.g. post36:

Once again, I'll accept the validity of my experience until someone can provide strong evidence that it's wrong. ...

[hr]

Consciousness has no means to originate thoughts in our impossibly complex brains. ...

You've offered no evidence to support this claim. Your proclamations don't constitute evidence.