:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Monday, October 27, 2003 ::

Psyche 9(13): 'Is Mental Life Possible Without the Will?' by Bruce Bridgeman: "Is Mental Life Possible Without the Will?
A Review of Daniel M. Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will "

Though we share an irresistible introspection that we possess a will governing our behavior and not controlled by outside forces or previous states, empirical research shows that such a will does not exist. Rather, actions are triggered unconsciously, and a memory-related part of the brain produces a narrative to explain the behavior after the fact.

In an abstract sense, the idea of free will has been untenable for a long time. In Western thought it is bound up with the medieval theological concept of the immortal soul, that part of us that goes to heaven or hell when we die. It is non-physical, escaping the limitations of behavior as well as the inevitability of death and decay. The demise of the soul is bound up with Cartesian dualism, which made it clear that the non-physical and the physical could not interact. A physical entity, after all, must by definition obey the laws of physics, being affected only by other physical influences. Since the soul is non-physical, it could not affect our physical behavior, including our communications of feelings, thoughts and memories

If free will is an illusion, what of all the virtues that it supports? Here the going gets even tougher. The scientific argument for a lack of free will, and the argument is logically overwhelming, is easy to state but hard to accept. A consistent illusion, however, defines reality for us just as surely as reality itself does. The illusion that our eyes provide a detailed, sharp and full-color image of the world, for example, is physiologically unsupported, yet the consistency of the illusion gives us the confidence to operate in a visual world that we barely apprehend. Similarly, the feeling of will helps us to organize our behaviors and to interpret the behaviors of others. In the end, the illusion of will is itself a story we tell ourselves to justify our behaviors and experiences.

:: Jim Nichols 10/27/2003 10:07:00 PM [+] ::
...