The Illusion of Self-Control - Part 11: Choosing the First Thought in a Sequence is a Logical Contradiction

I realize I’ve been discussing the same point for this entire series. The reason I want to keep discussing it is because I still haven’t quite figured out how to articulate these ideas clearly and most of all concisely. So just a note to say I appreciate all the help in examining these ideas.

In the previous post we discussed a sequence of thoughts that an individual experiences after hearing a question. We looked at one thought in this sequence and called this thought ‘thought x’. We established that if any thoughts are experienced before ‘thought x’ then ‘thought x’ cannot, by definition, be the first thought.

For example:

Person A is asked “What is the name of a fruit?”

Person A answers “Apple.”

Person A is asked “Was apple your first thought after hearing the question?”

Person A says “No, ‘orange’ was my first thought, but I changed my mind to ‘apple’?

So based on what Person A is reporting, ‘apple’ was not their first thought because they were aware of another thought that came before ‘apple’. 

In this post I want to discuss a question related to the example above:

"Is it possible for Person A to have consciously chosen ‘orange’ as their first thought?"

The problem that I’ve been trying to describe in the last several posts is that ‘consciously choosing’ is a process that requires at least a few thoughts to complete. So if the person claims ‘orange’ was their first thought then they could not have ‘consciously chosen’ this thought, because it implies at least a few thoughts came before ‘orange’.

In summary: 

Do you think consciously choosing the first thought in a sequence that follows a question is a logical contradiction?