Précis of the illusion of conscious will.
The Behavioral and brain sciences October 1, 2004 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1017/s0140525x04000159 via PubMed
Summary
The feeling of conscious will, the sense that we are causing our actions, may not accurately reflect what occurs in our minds and bodies. This feeling can be misleading, as seen in clinical disorders like alien hand syndrome and in non-disordered phenomena such as hypnosis and automatic writing. The theory presented suggests that conscious will arises from how we interpret our thoughts and actions rather than from a direct causal relationship between mind and action.
Study at a glance
| Key finding | Conscious will is more about how we interpret our thoughts and actions than a direct indication of causation. |
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Abstract
The experience of conscious will is the feeling that we are doing things. This feeling occurs for many things we do, conveying to us again and again the sense that we consciously cause our actions. But the feeling may not be a true reading of what is happening in our minds, brains, and bodies as our actions are produced. The feeling of conscious will can be fooled. This happens in clinical disorders such as alien hand syndrome, dissociative identity disorder, and schizophrenic auditory hallucinations. And in people without disorders, phenomena such as hypnosis, automatic writing, Ouija board spelling, water dowsing, facilitated communication, speaking in tongues, spirit possession, and trance channeling also illustrate anomalies of will--cases when actions occur without will or will occurs without action. This book brings these cases together with research evidence from laboratories in psychology to explore a theory of apparent mental causation. According to this theory, when a thought appears in consciousness just prior to an action, is consistent with the action, and appears exclusive of salient alternative causes of the action, we experience conscious will and ascribe authorship to ourselves for the action. Experiences of conscious will thus arise from processes whereby the mind interprets itself--not from processes whereby mind creates action. Conscious will, in this view, is an indication that we think we have caused an action, not a revelation of the causal sequence by which the action was produced.