Ben

Not quite. While I cannot choose (or even necessarily understand, much less predict) the impulses that strike me at a given moment, those impulses can tickle the higher levels of my neurological system such that I am aware of them and such that I desire something consciously. That desire (which, I concede, I did not originate) does (or at least can) drive my subsequent conscious thoughts and, by extension, behavior. This desire is the seed of “free agency” (my own term), the very structure of the grand illusion. It is also the basis for the understanding of ownership and responsibility.