You are.

Theres been quite a few things misinterpereted and mispresented here. i'm almost nervous just to reply because i dont feel like re-explaining so many things that you've said that are just incorrect by simple definition. i'll make a simplified attempt to answer your question.for starters, conciousness is a very grey area in science, psychololgy, and even phiolosophy. in college, i had a few concentrations of study, mostly science. because of that, i've learned a very architectural ideolgy of the brain. It's best to think of the brain as a large series of switches, which can be turned off and on by certain events. some events are triggered by external stimuli, some are triggered by internal stimuli, some can even be triggered to other switches opening and closing. What acutally constitues a conciousness can be viewed as a conglomerate of different processes interacting. when you interpret things, your brain uses certian pathways as a reaction. these processes can actually be self actuating, and can even actuate otheres that are also self actuating. This is difficult to explain, but bear with me. a single process contributes to what you'd view as a thought. lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of processes are involved in one thought. conciousness is a result of many different processes actuating both themselves, and others, of which also actuate themselves and others, sometimes even the one that started the whole process chain. This causes a state of constant awareness of many things. youre essentially constantly aware of how your body is positioned, visual cues, auditory cues, physical stimuli, etc. certain processes are associated (again, some can be self propigating) with those cues, and cause you to have certain feelings toward them. this is very complicated, and difficult to just jot down on a computer, i wrote a large thesis on this back in undergrad that i'll try and get on the wed in the next few days. this plays a large role in memory formation, repetition, emotions, etc.to put it shortly, conciousess is awareness of self condition on many levels. both external and internal. this awareness is expressed physically via a switch being "on" or "off". it all comes down to interpretation of sensory cues to electrical information, which is sorted by what we like to call our conciousness. very hard to explain, but on a basic level its very simple; on vs. offThis message has been edited by be LIE ve, 11-13-2005 08:31 PM

imagine for a second an adult human brain, that has never recieved ANY sensory information at all, not even from its own body. it knows nothing of language, nothing of its surroundings, nothing of language, nothing of a god or religion, its simply a brain. All the necessary equipment to generate a thought, everything necessary to carry out an action. to have a usefull thought, it'd need a language to process that in, it'd need a reason for action. what would it think about? could it think it all? it couldnt.
NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION
free will is the assimilation of what to do about things that need to be done. it is shaped by reward vs. punishment. your free will has been shaped by many things you experience. it's not your own, but a product of you reacting to your environment on to what is best for your situation. IF THERE IS NOTHING THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, NOTHING WILL BE DONE. if you didnt know anything had to be done about something, and you didnt know how to do or, or even what it was, it'd never exist to you. your "free will" is the same way. free will is less so much a freedom, so much as it is a formulated response.