6. Conscious will

2017 ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
Susan Blackmore
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Conscious Will

Do we have free will? ‘Conscious will’ considers this question and shows that the issue raises strong feelings because freedom implies responsibility. Part of the problem lies with determinism, which some philosophers accept is incompatible with free will. They argue that either determinism is false or free will must be an illusion. The timing of conscious acts, using the experiments of Benjamin Libet, and psychologist Daniel Wegner’s theories on the illusion of conscious will are discussed. Even if free will is an illusion, it is a very powerful illusion and so the feeling of being free carries on, especially for those people who fear that society would collapse without it.

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.

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 Critical psychology and brain: Rethinking free will in the legal context

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chetan Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Critical Psychology ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Legal Domain ◽  
Conscious Will

The article draws from critical psychology to discuss the rising debate on brain determinism and free will in the legal domain. As free will also corresponds to the context and culture, it can have both the public and private space of expressions. The rise of neuroscience and its influence in the legal domain offers a holistic and sociocultural meaning of responsibility. Even one becomes entitled to take free will as a ‘necessary illusion’ in order to be in the zone of ‘moral as well as legal-social life forming activities’. In the criminal justice system free will is not taken as any kind of necessary illusion but the conscious will and action of the person. This further throw light on how self-regulation directs oneself to the wilful control of illegitimate acts and the role of brain.

The Godfather of soul

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 482-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Preston ◽  
Kurt Gray ◽  
Daniel M. Wegner
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Physical Body ◽  
Conscious Will

An important component of souls is the capacity for free will, as the origin of agency within an individual. Belief in souls arises in part from the experience of conscious will, a compelling feeling of personal causation that accompanies almost every action we take, and suggests that an immaterial self is in charge of the physical body.

scholarly journals Is conscious will an illusion?

Disputatio ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (16) ◽  
pp. 58-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Conscious Will

Abstract In this essay I critically examine Daniel Wegner’s account of conscious will as an illusion developed in his book The Illusion of Conscious Will (MIT Press, 2002). I show that there are unwarranted leaps in his argument, which considerably decrease the empirical plausibility and theoretical adequacy of his account. Moreover, some features essential to our experience of willing, which are related to our general understanding of free will, moral responsibility and human agency, are largely left out in Wegner’s account of conscious will. This substantially diminishes its implications and significance for some profound philosophical issues.

scholarly journals Compatibilism and Conscious Will

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-75
Author(s):  
Michaela Košová
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Scientific Thinking ◽  
Conceptual Level ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Scientific Images ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Conscious Will

Daniel Dennett’s compatibilism based on redefining free will via broadening the concept of self to include unconscious processes seems to disappoint certain intuitions. As Sam Harris points out, it changes the subject from the free will we seem to intuitively care about – conscious free will. This compatibilism is untenable since conscious will seems to be an illusion. However, if we take Dennett’s idea of “atmosphere of free will” and view conscious will as an important concept or “user illusion” which is one of the atmosphere’s building blocks, we can see how a new compatibilism could be reached. Although from the point of view of scientific thinking conscious will seems illusory, inspired by Wilfrid Sellars’s conception of manifest and scientific images we can start to understand free will as existing on its own conceptual level. The confusion stems from mixing the two frameworks. Kompatibilismus Daniela Dennetta, založený na redefinování svobodné vůle skrze rozšíření konceptu „já“ o nevědomé procesy, se zdá být v nesouladu s jistými intuicemi. Jak upozorňuje Sam Harris, vyhýbá se té svobodné vůli, o kterou nám zřejmě intuitivně jde – vědomé svobodné vůli. Tento kompatibilismus je neudržitelný, protože vědomá vůle se zdá být iluzí. Když ale přijmeme Dennettovu myšlenku „atmosféry svobodné vůle“ a nahlédneme vědomou vůli jako důležitý koncept nebo „uživatelskou iluzi“, která je součástí této atmosféry, můžeme najít cestu k novému kompatibilismu. Ačkoliv se z vědeckého pohledu zdá být vědomá vůle iluzí, inspirováni koncepcí zjevného a vědeckého obrazu Wilfrida Sellarse můžeme porozumět svobodné vůli jako existující na své vlastní konceptuální úrovni. Zmatení přichází právě s mícháním zmiňovaných dvou rámců.

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.

Free will and the varieties of affective and conative selves

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 671-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaak Panksepp
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Neuronal Process ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
Conscious Will

A causally efficacious conscious will is a small part of our everyday activities, but a part that deserves to be recognized, studied, and cherished, perhaps as a fundamental, emotion- and conation-related, right hemispheric neuronal process. Such brain functions might be less in doubt if we consider all the pieces of the larger pie, especially those where our passions and desires reside.

scholarly journals Knowing your choice before you choose

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-11
Author(s):  
Hasan Çagatay
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Freedom Of Will ◽  
Neural Activities ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Unconscious Intentions ◽  
Conscious Intention ◽  
Conscious Will

In 1980s, neuroscientists joined philosophers and psychologists in the investigation of volitional actions and freedom of will. In a series of experiments pioneered by Benjamin Libet (1985), it was observed that some neural activities correlated with volitional action regularly precedes the conscious will to perform it, which suggests that what appears to be a free action may actually be predetermined by some neural activities, even before the conscious intention to act arises. Shortly after publication of that study, Libet’s findings and interpretations were started to be criticized on philosophical and methodological grounds. In this study, the legitimacy of the criticisms directed to Libet’s and his successors’ experiments is discussed by taking recent neuroscience studies on volition into account and it is argued that these criticisms are not sufficient to eliminate the doubt that these experiments casted on the freedom of the will.Keywords: Free will, Benjamin Libet, neuroscience, unconscious intentions.

When Mother Earth Rises Up

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Sacchi ◽  
Paolo Riva ◽  
Marco Brambilla
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Disaster Victims ◽  
Willingness To Help ◽  
Mother Earth

Anthropomorphization is the tendency to ascribe humanlike features and mental states, such as free will and consciousness, to nonhuman beings or inanimate agents. Two studies investigated the consequences of the anthropomorphization of nature on people’s willingness to help victims of natural disasters. Study 1 (N = 96) showed that the humanization of nature correlated negatively with willingness to help natural disaster victims. Study 2 (N = 52) tested for causality, showing that the anthropomorphization of nature reduced participants’ intentions to help the victims. Overall, our findings suggest that humanizing nature undermines the tendency to support victims of natural disasters.

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