Why conscious free will both is and isn't an illusion

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 677-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Velmans
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Person Account ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Conscious Will

Wegner's analysis of the illusion of conscious will is close to my own account of how conscious experiences relate to brain processes. But our analyses differ somewhat on how conscious will is not an illusion. Wegner argues that once conscious will arises it enters causally into subsequent mental processing. I argue that while his causal story is accurate, it remains a first-person story. Conscious free will is not an illusion in the sense that this first-person story is compatible with and complementary to a third-person account of voluntary processing in the mind/brain.

How we know our minds: The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality

1993 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Gopnik
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Direct Perception ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Developmental Shift ◽  
Representational Model ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Mind

AbstractAs adults we believe that our knowledge of our own psychological states is substantially different from our knowledge of the psychological states of others: First-person knowledge comes directly from experience, but third-person knowledge involves inference. Developmental evidence suggests otherwise. Many 3-year-old children are consistently wrong in reporting some of their own immediately past psychological states and show similar difficulties reporting the psychological states of others. At about age 4 there is an important developmental shift to a representational model of the mind. This affects children's understanding of their own minds as well as the minds of others. Our sense that our perception of our own minds is direct may be analogous to many cases where expertise provides an illusion of direct perception. These empirical findings have important implications for debates about the foundations of cognitive science.

The Illusion of Conscious Will

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Wegner ◽  
Daniel Gilbert ◽  
Thalia Wheatley
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Dissociative Identity Disorder ◽  
Psychological Study ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Conscious Will ◽  
Ouija Board

Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. The first edition of this book proposed an innovative and provocative answer: the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain; it helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, the book says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion (“the most compelling illusion”), it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. This new edition includes a foreword and an introduction. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, the book examines cases both when people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing and when they are not willing an act that they in fact are doing in such phenomena as hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, and dissociative identity disorder. The author's argument was immediately controversial (called “unwarranted impertinence” by one scholar) but also compelling, and the book has been called the author's magnum opus.

Multiple constraints and the resolution of Korean null subject anaphor

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sook Whan Cho ◽  
Hyun Jin Hwangbo
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Processing Load ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Person Features ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Syntactic Cues ◽  
Discourse Topic ◽  
Better Than

This study investigates how Korean adults interpret and identify the referent of a null subject in a narrative text, given different types of topic continuity and person features. We have found that the first-person feature was most accessible in the weak topicality condition in resolving the null subjects, and that the target sentences ending with the first-person modal suffix ‘-lay’ were read and responded to faster, and interpreted more correctly than other types of stimuli involving a third-person modal (‘-tay’) and a person-neutral modal (‘-e’). Furthermore, of the two first-person-specific featured types, the null subjects in the topically weak contexts were processed significantly better than those in the topically strong conditions. It was argued that anaphoric dependency would be formed more discursively than morpho-syntactically in the strong discourse continuity contexts involving no extra processing load due to the shift among multiple eligible candidates. It was also argued that, in the absence of discourse topic assigned strongly to more than one eligible referent in advance, morpho-syntactic cues involved in verb modality are likely to become prominent in the mind of the processor. It is concluded that these main findings support a constraint-based approach, but not the Centering-inspired work.

scholarly journals Folk Intuitions and the Conditional Ability to Do Otherwise

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nadelhoffer ◽  
Siyuan Yin ◽  
Rose Graves
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Folk Intuitions ◽  
Ability To Do Otherwise

In a series of three pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger), and (d) the difference between people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility in response to first-person scenarios and third-person scenarios. We predicted that once we focused participants’ attention on the two different abilities to do otherwise available to agents in indeterministic and deterministic scenarios, their intuitions would support natural incompatibilism—the view that laypersons judge that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. This prediction was borne out by our findings.

The Mind’s Compass

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Conscious Will

This chapter analyzes why the conscious experience of will might exist at all. Conscious will can be seen as a feeling that organizes and informs one's understanding of their own agency. Conscious will is a signal with many of the qualities of an emotion, one that reverberates through the mind and body to indicate when a person senses having authored an action. The idea that conscious will is an emotion of authorship moves beyond the standard way in which people have been thinking about free will and determinism and presses toward a useful new perspective. The chapter explores how the emotion of authorship serves key functions in the domains of achievement and morality.

scholarly journals First Person Account COVID 19 Delirium in a Doctor: When Death Stalks the Mind

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Arumi ◽  
Andrea Bulbena-Cabre ◽  
Antonio Bulbena
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Severe Illness ◽  
First Person ◽  
Doctor Who ◽  
Course Of Illness ◽  
Intense Fear ◽  
Lack Of Control ◽  
Risks Factors ◽  
Person Account ◽  
The Mind

Previous studies reported that 20–30% of COVID-19 patients will develop delirium during the hospitalization, achieving 70% in cases of severe illness. The risks factors and the consequences of delirium are well-documented in the literature; however, little is known about the personal experience of delirium. Delirium burden is common and tends to be distressing even after the delirium episode has resolved. Taking this in mind, the present work provides a first-person account of a doctor who acquired Covid-19 and developed bilateral pneumonia and had delirium and a complicate course of illness. During the course of his delirium, the patient recalled experiences of reality and unreality, complete disorientation, lack of control, strong emotions, and intense fear of dying which was significantly distressing. We anticipate that delirium burden will be common on these patients and family members and clinicians should be aware of this phenomenon in order to evaluate the neuropsychiatric consequences of this condition.

scholarly journals First-person subjective vs. Third-person objective; the universe is a collection of self-driven mathematical entities; the first-person subjective consciousness is the use of mathematical models by a Turing machine

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu
Keyword(s):  
Turing Machine ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
World Line ◽  
Geometric Model ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Physical Interactions ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
Level Calculation

Physical interactions among any number of elementary particles (EPs) are governed by physical laws (e.g., the Schrodinger equation). In the reality, the predetermined world lines of all EPs form a predetermined state machine. What a Turing machine perceives/predicts, is not the reality itself (but a mathematical model (MM) of the reality), but it is incorrectly treated by this Turing machine as the reality, when this Turing machine deals with everyday challenges. The subjective experience is actually the use of a MM by a Turing machine within its low-level calculation. For example, when a Turing machine uses its geometric model of the reality (GMR), it feels like the subjective experience of being immersed within a geometric structure. The GMR, which is a component of the mind, is a real-time representation of all the EPs within the reality; the GMR only includes the physical objects perceived in the mind. A naïve cognitive researcher might incorrectly treat her GMR as the real world. A Turing machine can use its GMR. Using the semantics of human language, the use of GMR is described as subjectively experiencing the GMR. The subjective experience shouldn’t be able to impact the predetermined world line of any EP within this world.

scholarly journals How to Include Patients' Perspectives in the Study of the Mind: A Review of Studies on Depression

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henriette Löffler-Stastka ◽  
Kathrin Bednar ◽  
Ingrid Pleschberger ◽  
Tamara Prevendar ◽  
Giada Pietrabissa
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Major Step ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Mind ◽  
And Coping

Depression has been widely studied by researchers from different fields, but its causes, and mechanism of action are still not clear. A difficulty emerges from the shifting from objective diagnosis or analysis to exploration of subjective feelings and experiences that influence the individuals' expression, communication and coping in facing depression. The integration of the experiential dimension of the first-person in studies on depression–and related methodological recommendations–are needed to improve the validity and generalizability of research findings. It will allow the development of timely and effective actions of care. Starting from providing a summary of the literature on theoretical assumptions and considerations for the study of the mind, with particular attention to the experiential dimension of patients with depression (aim #1 and #2), this contribution is aimed to provide practical suggestions for the design of research able to incorporate first- and third-person accounts (aim #3). It is also aimed to review qualified phenomenological methods for the acquisition and interpretation of experiential data in patients with depression (aim #4). Recognizing the first-person perspective in the study of depression is a major step toward a better understanding and treatment of this disorder. Theoretical constructs and technique suggestions that result from this review offer a valid starting point for the inclusion of the experiential dimension to common third-person research in the study of the mind.

Human and Animal Minds

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Report ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
First Person ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Mind

The book offers solutions to two related puzzles. One is about the place of phenomenal—or felt—consciousness in the natural order. Consciousness is shown to comprise fine-grained nonconceptual contents that are “globally broadcast” to a wide range of cognitive systems for reasoning, decision making, and verbal report. Moreover, the so-called “hard” problem of consciousness results merely from the distinctive first-person concepts we can use when thinking about such contents. No special non-physical properties—no qualia—need to be introduced. The second puzzle concerns the distribution of phenomenal consciousness across the animal kingdom. Here the book shows that there is, in fact, no fact of the matter. This is because thinking about phenomenal consciousness in other creatures requires us to project our first-person concepts into the mind of another; but such projections fail to result in determinate truth-conditions when the mind of the other is significantly unlike our own. This upshot, however, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter for science, because no additional property enters the world as one transitions from creatures that are definitely incapable of phenomenal consciousness to those that definitely are (namely, ourselves). And on many views it doesn’t matter for ethics, either, since concern for animals can be grounded in sympathy, which requires only third-person understanding of the desires and emotions of the animal in question, rather than in first-person empathy

Reduction: The Solution to Mind Representation?

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-315
Author(s):  
Yanying Cui ◽  
Yidong Wei
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Elements ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Naturalistic Methodology ◽  
Leading Position ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The Mind

Abstract Chomsky is an evolutionary figure in linguistics. His greatest contribution lies in transformational generative grammar, which put an end to the leading position structuralism had held in language for more than 30 years. His naturalistic methodology has greatly influenced the research of both linguistics and psychology, and he is also considered to be the first to study language from the cognitive perspective. He insists on a naturalistic methodology; therefore, he was even considered by some to be a physicalist. However, this is not the case. On the contrary, TGG, as a critique of the behaviorist view of language, is intertwined with a critique of physicalism. On the one hand, he thinks the mind, like chemical elements and electrons, can be approached from a third-person perspective; on the other hand, he again admits there exists consciousness, which can be merely approached in terms of a first-person authority, which, therefore, is a fatal challenge to his core theory. Now there remains a new solution to this dilemma, that is, to admit that the mind is a special natural phenomenon with two means of existence: one is involved in physical aspects with the brain, and the other is concerned with something mental, with the former approached by a third-person perspective and the latter better researched via a first-person authority.

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