Free Neuropath by R. Scott Bakker

this was out and out incontrovertible, but thanks to a culture bent on pseudo-empowerment, scarcely a peep could be heard above the self-congratulatory roar. Nobody, from truck drivers to cancer researchers, wanted to hear how self-absorbed and error-prone they were. Why bother with a scientific tongue-lashing when you could have a corporate hand-job?
    'Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery, Agent Logan.'
    'Which is?'
    He nodded at the parade of passers-by beyond the plate-glass window. 'Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system.'
    Her face crooked into a rueful smile. 'I've seen my fair share of delusions, trust me. The people we hunt burn them for fuel.'
    'Not just the people you hunt, Agent Logan. All of us.'
    'All of us?' she repeated. Something about her tone told Thomas that the distinction between her and her quarry was important to her. No surprise there, given the things she must have witnessed over the years.
    He leaned back, holding her gaze. 'You do realize that every thought, every experience, every element of your consciousness is a product of various neural processes? We know this because of cases of brain damage. All I have to do is press a coat hanger past your eye, wriggle it around a little, and you'd be utterly changed.' This description never failed to provoke expressions of disgust in his classroom, but Agent Logan seemed unimpressed.
    'So?'
    'You're right. In a sense it's a trivial point. Every time you take an aspirin you're assuming you're a biomechanism, something that can be tweaked with chemicals. But think about what I said. Your every experience is a product of neural processes.'
    It seemed he could sense Neil leaning over his shoulder as he said this, a grinning aura, knowing full well the destination, but morbidly curious as to the path old Goodbook would take. Neil looked at heads the way ill-tempered children looked at toys—as things to be fucked with.
    'I'm not following you, professor.'
    Thomas hooked his shoulders and palms in a professorial you're-not-going-to-like-this gesture. 'Well, how about free will? That's a kind of experience, isn't it?'
    'Of course.'
    'Which means free will is a product of neural processes.'
    A wary pause. 'It has to be, I guess.'
    'So then how is it free? I mean, if it's a product, and it is a product—I could show you case studies of brain damaged patients who think they will everything that happens, who think they command the clouds on the horizon, the birds in the trees. If the will is a product of neural functioning then how could it be free?'
    Frowning, Sam suddenly swigged her beer, head back, the way a truck driver might. Thomas watched her slender throat, as white as a barked sapling, flex as she swallowed.
    She gasped and said, 'I just chose to drink, didn't I?'
    'I don't know. Did you?'
    For the first time her face crinkled into a look that was openly incredulous. 'Of course. What else could it be?'
    'Well, as a matter of fact —fact, unfortunately, not speculation—your brain simply processed a chain of sensory inputs, me yapping, then generated a particular behavioral output, you drinking.'
    'But…' She trailed.
    'That's not the way it feels,' Thomas said, completing her sentence. 'It's pretty clear that our sense of willing things is… well, illusory. It started with a variety of experiments showing how easy it is to fool people into thinking that they're willing things they actually have no control over. That laid the groundwork. Then, when the costs of neuro-imaging began to plummet—remember all the hoopla about low-field MRIs several years back?—more and more researchers demonstrated they could actually determine their subject's choices before they were conscious of making them. Willing, it turns out, is an addon of some kind, something that comes to us after the fact.'
    Now she seemed