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Thinking is kind of hard to think about. Suppose, for instance, you want to think about a pumpkin pie. OK. In your mind. A picture of a pie. Now did anything precede that picture? Say a picture of a pumpkin. Was there any connection? Did the picture of  the pumpkin cause the picture of the pie? Either it did or it did not. If it did, then you did not choose to think about the pie. Your thought was an effect. The picture was caused by whatever preceded it. And that was caused by whatever preceded that. And on and on back to the creation of the world. There is no choosing in the whole sequence. You never choose anything. Whatever is in your head, a picture or just a thought, is caused by something earlier. Cause-effect-cause-effect. Everything.

 Now if you don’t like the idea that everything is caused by something before, then your only alternative is that your pie picture was random, it just showed up. But that’s no help. If it was really random, then the idea of the platter has no connection with the idea of pie. Picture of a pie preceded by picture of a fish preceded by picture of an airplane or a screwdriver or anything. Like a dream. A series of unconnected events.  Although many, led by Freud, do think dream events are connected. Same problem.

There is our mortal (not moral) problem: Either A. We don’t make choices because everything is determined, or B. We don’t make choices because everything is random. 

Take your caused or random pick.