As far as I am concerned, the answer is no.

I'm sure people will disagree on this - it's not a mainstream "theory". However I wasn't really making a case for it. I just took it further than that because the debate is pretty boring for me.

Regarding consciousness and free will, while I agree that consciousness is a carrier of free will, I believe it is not ordinarily expressed while one's mind is in a mode of reacting to prior thoughts or stimuli. The reactive mind cannot have free will. It can access it when it taps into a larger consciousness stream but normally, no.