Ben's powerpoint Illusion of conscious will.ppt

1. A review of Daniel M. Wegner's
Précis of The Illusion of Conscious Will
Published 2004, Behavioural & Brain Sciences 27.
Neuroscience of free will

2. Approach
 The experience of “Free will”
 Science is a method of investigation which (ideally) forms
hypotheses which are consistent with known facts about the
physical world, and then tests those hypotheses.
 Further evidence corroborates or disproves the theory.

3. What kind of will do we have?
 Theory about what kind of will we have can be tested empirically;
 'freedom' can mean freedom from outward constraints, or it can
mean unpredictability, or a number of other things;
 But by looking very deliberately at how conscious will works, we
focus on empirical facts about observable events – a scientific
approach.

4. Wegner's paper
 That's where Wegner's paper comes in.
 Hume quote – “will is the internal impression we feel and are
conscious of when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of
our body”
 Rather than attempting to weigh in on the “free will” debate,
Wegner attempts to explore the hypothesis about “conscious
will”.
 By this, Wegner means something a little more specific than what
we usually mean by 'free will'. He proceeds by giving some
examples...

5. Experience is central to the
concept of will
 Will is the personal feeling of
causation.
 “Consciously willing an action
requires a feeling of doing (Ansfield
& Wegner 1996), a kind of internal
“oomph” that somehow certifies
authentically that one has done the
action. If the person did not get that
feeling about her shower, then even
if we climbed in with her to
investigate, there is no way we
could establish for sure whether she
consciously willed her showering”
Wegner (2004, p2)

6. Alien hand syndrome
aka Dr. Strangelove syndrome
 Wegner says this an example of
action not caused by the will
 In alien hand syndrome, people
experience a limb doing actions
without being consciously aware of
it.
 Different from reflexive actions,
because people with the syndrome
can't will to stop it.
 One woman tied up her arm at
night to keep it from picking at her
clothes, grasping for nearby objects
and even at her throat (Banks et al
1989, p456).

7. Wegner's Conditions of human
action
Wegner, 2004, p3
Feeling of Doing No Feeling of Doing
Doing Normal voluntary
action
Automatism
Not Doing Illusion of Control Normal inaction

8. Wegner's Conditions of human
action
Feeling of Doing No Feeling of Doing
Doing Normal voluntary
action
'ILLUSORY'
Automatism
Not Doing Illusion of Control Normal inaction
'ILLUSORY'

9. Big claim?
 It can be difficult to understand precisely what Wegner is trying
to get at here.
 A number of authors do seem to have a problem with Wegner; I'll
start with some of the more chillingly entertaining replies.
 These demonstrate the level of controversy that can be
associated with asserting determinist points of view.

10. Wegner's position on “Free Will
and Determinism”
 Wegner (2004) does address the “free will vs determinism”
debate (though as we'll see, it's important to understand his
main thesis isn't addressing this debate)
 A recap?
 A “free-willer” module “would not generate the experience of
conscious will” (p9)

11. Anti-determinist opposition
 Wegner (2004) does write from a
determinist perspective, although his
main point is finer than that.
 Determinism?
 Compatibilism: Have your cake and eat it
too: Determinism AND free will.
 Wegner attempts to explain how we feel
free
 But some reviewers take issue with his
determinism...

12. Anti-determinist opposition
 Although the main thesis is
not determinism in itself,
several critics seem
concerned Wegner's view
could lead to challenging
conventional morality.
Cristiano Banti, (1857). Galileo facing
the Roman Inquisition.

13. Anti-determinist opposition
 Mandler (2004) is concerned
about links with Nazi Germany
concepts of Will;
 Young (2004) seems concerned
about the implications for
personal responsibility. He's
also worried about whether the
idea contradicts “most
contemporary religious
thought. Is this a battle that
Wegner wishes to fight?” (p30)
(...wait WHAT?)
Cristiano Banti, (1857). Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition.

14.  Although some critics misunderstand him, what Wegner means
to do is describe how we come to experience will
 “Tweney & Wachholtz note, 'thus, we could prove that there is
free will'...they reveal their assumption that the actual
relationship between thought and action is at issue here.” (p36)
 Again, “ICW is not about whether thought causes action. It is
about whether the experience of conscious will [directly] reflects
such causation”. (p36)

15. Wegner's Conditions of human
action
Feeling of Doing No Feeling of Doing
Doing Normal voluntary
action
'ILLUSORY'
Automatism
Not Doing Illusion of Control Normal inaction
'ILLUSORY'

16. The Illusory 'Will'
 To be clear, when Wegner says the 'will' is illusory, he's not
arguing for determinism (that's already assumed).
 People with Alien Hand Syndrome, or the person who goes to
have a shower, gets in, scrubs up, and gets out, all by routine
habit, don't necessarily lack awareness of their actions.
 What puts them in the top right “Automatism” quadrant of the
table is that they don't actively perceive their actions to be
consciously willed.
 Wegner's will is the feeling of wanting to make something
happen (like moving a limb).
Feeling of Doing No Feeling of Doing
Doing Normal voluntary
action
'ILLUSORY'
Automatism
Not Doing Illusion of Control
Normal inaction
'ILLUSORY'

17. The 'Illusory' Will
 Wegner's will is the feeling of wanting to make something
happen (like moving a limb). Specifically, Wegner quotes David
Hume to define it:
 will is “nothing but the internal impression we feel and are
conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of
our body, or new perception of our mind” (Hume in Wegner,
2004)
 But of course, in normal voluntary action, which Wegner says is in
some sense illusory, a decision to, say, cross the road does lead to
crossing the road
 Then what's the illusion?
Feeling of Doing No Feeling of Doing
Doing Normal voluntary
action
'ILLUSORY'
Automatism
Not Doing Illusion of Control
Normal inaction
'ILLUSORY'

18. The 'Illusory' Will
 Then what's the illusion?
 Wegner develops a distinction between two types of 'Will'
 Empirical will: Of course, there is a decision-making process within
the human brain which leads to actions – this is the empirical will.
 Phenomenal will: THIS is the ' conscious will' which Wegner says is
illusory.
 He then describes the 'theory of apparent mental causation':
 'People experience conscious will when they interpret their own
thought as the cause of their action' (Wegner & Wheatley, 1999)
 Wegner says the conscious will (conscious thought to take an
action) is not the cause of the action; but we think it is, and THIS
is the illusion.
Feeling of Doing No Feeling of Doing
Doing Normal voluntary
action
'ILLUSORY'
Automatism
Not Doing Illusion of Control
Normal inaction
'ILLUSORY'

19. Causal agency vs. mechanistic
perception
Wegner says we have (at least)
two sets of rules for
predicting behaviour of things
around us.
 Mechanistic perception:
Things perceived as inert, like
a ball, follow rules of physics.
We don't (except for
Chalmers) say a ball intends
or wants to roll down a track
– it just does.

20. Causal agency vs. mechanistic
perception
Wegner says we have (at least) two sets
of rules for predicting behaviour of
things around us.
 Mechanistic perception: Things
perceived as inert, like a ball, follow
rules of physics.
 Causal agency: We use our “Theory of
Mind”1 to expect intentional
behaviour from other minds.
 Dennett (1987) suggested perceived
'mindedness' could be variable
1(Premack & Woodruff, 1978)

21. Causal agency
 Perhaps we infer causation in our own mind by the same process
which we use to infer causal agency in others' minds?
 The actual causal path of our thought process from input to
output is extremely complex and we don't have the means to
access or understand it.

22. Apparent Mental Causation
 People experience conscious will when they interpret their own
thought as the cause of their action (Wegner & Wheatley, 1999)
 The Magical Tree
 Causal analysis is always problematic. Whenever we infer that A
causes B, we can never really rule out that perhaps it was in fact
C that causes A and B.
 And there exists no way for us to know, for sure, what has caused
our own actions.
 Thus, we have to use principles of casual inference to infer the
causes (motivations, etc) of our actions.

23. Three key sources
Wegner (2004) points to three key qualifications for cause to
attributed to our own will
 Priority (the thought should occur before the action)
 Consistency (be consistent with the action)
 Exclusivity (there shouldn't be other, more plausible causes)
 (Michotte, 1963)

24. Will as a class of cognitive feelings
 Cognitive feelings, distinct from emotions, are things like
 Knowing
 Familiarity
 Confusion
(Clore, 1992)
 These arise from certain states of knowledge. Perhaps we can
add “willing” to this - “conscious will is the emotion of
authorship, a somatic marker that authenticates the action's
owner as the self” (Damasio, 1994)

25. But is it true?
Wegner's article does seem thin on the ground when it comes to
empirical data.
His key evidence, he says, are:
 Automatisms – e. g. Bargh & Ferguson (2000)
 Over-experience of will (Haidt & Rodin, 1999; Langer, 1975;
Taylor & Brown, 1988).
 Apparent mental causation: Ansfield & Wegner (1996); Wegner &
Wheatley (1999)

26. What do the critics say?
 “Yes, conscious will is an illusion, but there are a couple things...
Dennett, Glymour, Ito, Morton, Raz & Norman, Velmans, Young
 “Yes, but you've got conscious will wrong.”
Jack & Robbins, Metzinger, Pylyshyn
 “Yes, but this isn't your idea”
Kirsch & Lynn, Mandler

27. What do the critics say?
 Conscious will isn't an illusion...
(Sternberg, Ainslie, Hardcastle, Hayman, Krueger, Schultz, Sebanz &
Frith; Tweney & Wachholtz;
 Conscious will isn't an illusion, and this is utter crap!
(Bogen, Kihlstrom, Zuriff)

28. George Ainslie
“Wegner over-reads the implications of these examples when he
calls conscious will an illusion”. (Ainslie, 2004)
 The Magic Tree doesn't work – to get the the sense of conscious
will, we need not only 'Priority, Contiguity, Exclusivity' but also
proprioception. (

29. Daniel Dennett
 Criticises Wegner (2004) for continuing to imagine a little man
inside our heads who sits at the control centre.
 There's something to this.
 One hangover from Cartesian dualism is that we tend to identify
the “self” with that “Free-willer box”....
In fact, our our conscious awareness, and the things that make up
what a person calls their “Self”, though not fully understood,
arises from a variety of different processes throughout the brain
(Dennett, 2000).
 “We inhabit an extraordinary machine” (p328) is the wrong way
to look at it – better to say “We are extraordinary machines”.

30. Some commentators seem to miss
the point...
 Argues that the 'implicit assumption of the freedom of the will is
essential to learning' (p14).
 This doesn't seem right – we could still observe cause (action) and
effect (result) and know what to do or not do next time.
 Hardcastle likewise says “willed actions flow from or through my
psychological states in ways that unwilled actions don't.”
 This is true but seems irrelevant:
 A→B, or (A→B & A→C)?
 Kihlstrom's objection seems similar – he points out that the will-
lessness of a hypnotised patient is an illusion (but this is on a
different level)

31. Others ask interesting questions:
 If conscious will is just a byproduct of thought processes which
actually make our decisions, why do we have it?

32. Sternberg
 Tells the story of Lee Boyd Malvo
 The killer is not the 'man in the machine' – the killer is the man
that is the machine.

33. In Conclusion
 Wegner makes an argument based on several separate categories
of observations that our feeling of deciding to perform an action
does not actually cause the action, although it looks like it does,
and this is the illusion.
 Assume determinism.
 Evidence:
 routine actions
 alien hand syndrome
 illusory sense of control (e.g. jinxing a sports game)
 Criticism

34. References
Ainslie, G. (2004). The self is virtual, the will is not illusory. Behavioral and brain sciences,
27(5), 11-12.
Banks, G., Short, P., Martinez, A. J., Latchaw, R., Ratcliff, G. & Boller, F. (1989)
The alien hand syndrome clinical and postmortem findings. Archives of Neurology
46:456–59. [aDMW]
Clore, G. (1992) Cognitive phenomenology: Feelings and the construction of judgment. In:
The construction of social judgments, ed. L. L. martin, pp.133-63. Erlbaum.
Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Avon.
Dennett, D. C. (1987). The intentional stance. Bradford Books/MIT Press.
Dennett, D. C. (2000). Are we explaning consciousness yet? Cognition, 79, 221-237.

35. References
Mandler, G. (2005). Free will for everyone – with flaws. Behavioral and Brain Sciences，
27(5), 21.
Michotte, A. (1963). The perception of causality, trans. T. R. Miles & E. Miles. Basic Books.
Schopenhauer, A. (1932). Prize essay on the freedom of the will.
Sternberg, R. J. (2004) . Is the illusion of conscious will an illusion? Behavioral and Brain
Sciences， 27(5), 27.
Voltaire (1752/1924) Voltaire's philosophical dictionary, trans. H. I. Woolf, Knopf.
Wegner, D. M. & Wheatley, T. P. (1999). Apparent mental causation: Sources of the
experience of will. American Psychologist 54(7), 480-492.
Young, M. E. (2004). The short- and long-term consequences of believing an illusion.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences， 27(5), 29.