For the past few months I've been mulling over an intuition I have, that consciousness implies free will, that in fact the two are inextricably linked. I've never spelled this out before now:

I've always liked Nietzsche's construction of determinism. There is no lightning bolt, there is naught but flash. In a deterministic framework there is no individual. There is no lightning bolt. There is no me, there is no you. There is nothing but actions dictated by previous actions, a never ending chain of cause and effect (that is, of course, another huge problem with determinism; most people admit that infinity does not exist, which if we wish to continue asserting a chain of causality would necessitate a prime mover; it's bizarre to attribute the divine/mystical property of prime mover-ship to base matter, and for good reason have people for centuries attributed this characteristic to God or Nous or something along those lines). The "individual" is totally replaceable. Were another sack of molecules to share the same configuration with me, that other sack of molecules would be me, just as much as I am me. I am, after all, nothing but the sum of my past physical experiences, a domino defined by the chain that fell into me. The precice domino that fills that slot is irrelevant.

There is nothing unique about the individual, nor is there anything necessary about him. Because of the possibility that two "individuals" could exist simultaneously in a determinist framework, the concept of the individual is contradictory to the concept of determinism. Individuals need not exist in a deterministic world. The lightning will flash just as well if there is no bolt. As Nietzsche colorfully put it, such talk of individualism is just a pipe dream, an idealistic construction rooted in language and nothing more.

Consciousness is one of the cornerstones of true individualism (and I speak not of radical individualism or anything along those lines, but rather the robust conception of men existing in and of themselves, each with a uniqueness and consequential worth that is indicative of his status as a human being). Consciousness is the supreme affirmation of me-ness, of the recognition of oneself in the world as a discrete and irreplaceable entity in the world. Consciousness is a prerequisite for choice. With freedom of will comes the necessity for actors, and an actor cannot act if he is not first aware of himself.

Despite having heard plenty of defenses of determinisms of all types, I have yet to hear a cogent denial of consciousness.

This is the only way I can think of to salvage the otherwise doomed Cartesian project.