Many of our conscious choices are driven by subconscious desires, but not all.Oh? And how do you know this?
I suppose it's logically possible that there are high-level priorities that are neither formed out of nor controlled by lower-level ones. But you couldn't know that even if that were the case, and as incoherent as most people are, they're still more consistent than your claim implies they should be.
It is much, much more elegant - and more compatible with what we know about cognition - to hold that the complex systems are built out of smaller, simpler systems over which the complex has no control.
Followup to: Possibility and Could-ness
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) said:
For this fascinating sentence, I immediately saw two interpretations; and then, after some further thought, two more interpretations.
On the first interpretation, Schopenhauer forbids us to build circular causal models of human psychology. The explanation for someone's current will cannot be their current will - though it can include their past will.
On the second interpretation, the sentence says that alternate choices are not reachable - that we couldn't have taken other options even "if we had wanted to do so".
On the third interpretation, the sentence says that we cannot control our own desires - that we are the prisoners of our own passions, even when we struggle against them.
On the fourth interpretation, the sentence says that we cannot control our own desires, because our desires themselves will determine which desires we want, and so protect themselves.
I count two true interpretations and two false interpretations. How about you?