The Illusion of Self Control - Part 5: Why Choosing Our Next Thought Seems to Present a Logical Contradiction

The conventional belief in our society is that the individual has some way of controlling or at least influencing some of the thoughts that they experience. My claim is that:

“It is not possible, in this moment, to be aware of a thought before it is experienced. Therefore it is impossible to ever have any conscious influence, in this moment, on a thought before it is experienced.” 

The idea that an individual can influence a thought before they experience it, seems to pose a logical contradiction.

In order to have some influence on a thought before we experience it, we would also need to have some awareness of that thought before we experience it. The problem here is that awareness of a thought before we experience it, is essentially saying we have the ability to be aware of something before we are aware of it. In the moments before we are aware of something, that thing is unconscious to us. Therefore to claim we can be aware of something before we experience it, is equivalent to saying we can be conscious of something that is unconscious.

Seeing something that is invisible is a logical contradiction.

Being conscious of something that is unconscious is also a logical contradiction in a similar way.

Choosing a thought before we experience it is equivalent to saying we can be conscious of something that is unconscious, which as previously stated is a logical contradiction

A typical way of challenging this claim is to say something like:

Statement #1: My intention is for my next thought to be about an apple.

Statement #2: Now I am thinking about an apple.

The problem here is that two thoughts have been reported. The first statement is indeed an intention but it is also a thought. Statement #1 is the one we’re interested in as the next thought. A statement like this often just pops into our head and we don’t usually question it. When we do, we see that it’s not possible to separate a thought from an intention, because an intention is a thought. This is why choosing our next thought presents an unavoidable logical contradiction.