Determinism.....

[Tiberius]

So when you say the subconscious decides before the conscious do you mean it decides while we are still thinking 'maybe I should do this or maybe that', or do you mean it decides just before us, meaning it chooses the act just before we decide that is the best action to take?

It means that even if we think we are making the decision to pick up the ball, our subconscious mind has already made the decision, a few nanoseconds before we think we have. I forget the research paper that convinced me (it was quite recently though), but the experiments involved watching people's brains react as they make decisions.