" Behavior, in this view, “is solely the consequence of the past history of the system, that has brought it to a state where various neuronal populations form an excitatory consortium that organizes and ineluctably triggers the correlated synaptic volleys needed for a particular movement,” as the neuroscientist Robert Doty described it. The sense that one is exercising free will when one orders the cheesecake or moves the cursor on the computer screen to another game of hearts rather than to the spreadsheet program with your overdue taxes—is an illusion, an artifact of a prescientific era, says the prevailing paradigm. The idea that we might choose cantaloupe over cheesecake is as illusory as the apparent underwater “bending” of an oar dipped into a river. "

― Jeffrey M. Schwartz , The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force