Customer Reviews

The Illusion of Conscious Will (Bradford Books)

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4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I loved the way this book started. For example, the evidence that people can feel they are controlling other people's actions is fascinating. The overall theory of how we feel we are willing things is well presented, as is the idea that such a feeling is an illusion. This isn't shocking stuff to some, but to others it will be a huge revelation.

I do have complaints. For the tiny ones first (big one at the end). First, I object to calling the loss of pain and loss of memory during hypnosis examples of increased mental control. By that definition, Alzheimers patients have increased control. What one isn't aware of one isn't aware of and this hardly seems like control.

As far as not being able to avoid thinking of things, it seems to me the explanation is simpler. Words conjure images, but negative words have no images associated with them so when you say "Don't think about a bear" the only word causing an image is bear, and so you think of a bear. Trying to monitor bear thoughts will lead to bear thoughts. Also he says, if you are distracted while you are trying not to do something you will be more likely to do it. I can see that since trying not to do something (like drop a jar) requires action in an opposite direction, i.e. it requires effort. But is this true when you are trying NOT to think of something? If I tried not to think of Wegner's white bear and was then asked to recite the Gettysburg address I strongly suspect I would forget the bear. Not thinking about something, unlike not doing does not require any positive action. Distraction ought to make it easier to forget and he never distinguishes between these and acts as if what is true of behavior is true of thoughts.

But my BIG complaint is the last chapter. He suddenly claims his own theories only explain why we feel will, but he tried to minimize the impact of all this on morality and even started talking about will as a causal force again. He even seemed at times when using the word will to indicate something that wasn't necessarily conscious. This is nonsense. If will isn't conscious it isn't will.

Our thoughts have causal impact on our actions, but then what is the cause of our thoughts? Clearly we don't control these either. They are a sum of what we are, what we have experienced, the way our brains are wired together etc. As far as morality I have to believe that the only thing we can judge is individual bits of behavior. Behavior is moral or not, acceptable or not and some people have a higher propensity to engage in unacceptable behaviors than others--whatever the reasons. As a society we have to judge behavior and engage in activities to modify the behavior of others when it is unacceptable and that is what our jutsice system should attempt. If an individual's behavior remains unacceptable or cannot be modified, we have an obligation to put them where they cannot engage in the behavior.

Wegner is clearly unwilling to give up on the idea that people will their behavior and are thus responbsible in the traditional way for what they do. The idea that we can use "mens rea" a guilty mind to show a person willed their actions seems like a dubious standard to me. A person may not will their behavior but later feels guilty because they realize their behavior is in violation of their own moral code. A person totally lacking a developed moral code (a sociopath, let's say) would never exhibit a guilty mind. Are such folks les guilty? Or less dangerous?

The whole issue of whether mental states should be considered in a legal system should be abandoned as far as I can see. I believe we should judge behavior and then decide what to do with the person engaging in the behavior. What we do should be motivated by our desire to 1) modify the person's behavior and 2) protect innocents. The strategy for each individual will vary depending on their mental abilities and their behavioral history etc and we may often get it wrong.

Wegner's thesis has much bigger implications for our ideas about personal responsibility than he wants to admit and ultimately he is unwilling to really stick with his guns. That was a dissappointment.

But the book has a lot of great stuff to say and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in mind/body questions.

Wegner makes an interesting step forward in the free will/determinism debate. He argues that "conscious will" is indeed an important EXPERIENCE, which serves vital purposes; but he denies that ACTS of conscious will CAUSE the actions we believe them to cause. "Will" is not how I bring about the things I do, but perceiving and understanding what I do--though the "I" is mostly unconscious, and the causes of actions more or less entirely so.

Thus, Wegner does NOT deny that we are the authors of our own actions or that thoughts cause actions; but he denies that "will" is among the causally effective psychological events. "Will" is a way of keeping track of which actions are caused by me--by my intentions, beliefs, desires, and so forth. It is an indicator, and a vitally important one, but not more than that.

I will be surprised if this this theory turns out to be ultimately correct, mostly because Wegner seems to lack an adequate general theory of consciousness and its functions within which to house and understand will. Consciousness did not arise for no reason--any trait that occurs at a rate above chance must be naturally selected, hence evolutionarily important, and consciousness occurs in about 100% of humans and apparently huge numbers of other animal species. Consciousness could turn out to be just sort of a matter of taste, effectively useless, like the peacock's tail. But that seems unlikely, since consciousness seems to be much more universal that shiny big tails. Conscious will needs to be understood as part of consciousness, and very good science--theoretical and experiemtnal--demonstrates that consciousness has causal efficacy. (See, for instance, Bernard J. Baars' nice intro to "consciousness science" in his book, "In the Theater of Conscousness.")

That said, the feeling of willing remains distinct from other elements of consciousness--simply because each type of mental content is distinct from each other type--and thus much needs to be understood about its peculiar traits and function. Wegner certainly points in intriguing directions.

Two disappointment: First, and fairly trivial, Wegner knows very well that his theory is very, very far from being established, or even being the leading contender, and he often says so--e.g., that the evidence is "consistent with" the theory, or "suggests" the theory, or that the theory "would help" undertand various things. But being human, he can't avoid slipping into assuming and talking as though his theory is simply right--sometimes calling it an "assumption" and a "realization" in the same paragraph! I found the latter annoying.

More significant, Wegner sidesteps one central issue: Why does "will" feel free? We all know that we sometimes initate actions without feeling free to do otherwise--whenever "curiousity gets the better" of you, for instance. Other times we experience ourselves as free to will one thing or the other. Saying that will is perception of my causing my own acts does not explain the difference--and that difference is one of the main things the free will/determinism debate is about.

News flash: there is no such thing as free will. I notice that this fact really irritates a lot of the reviewers here, which makes a good deal of sense. If we accept that there is no free will, we feel our own glory diminished, much as some feel when contemplating the idea that there is no afterlife. A lot of the arguments in favor of free will start with unfounded assumptions that there "must be" some form of free will, because that is the only possible explanation for order in the Universe. Order is really just a manifestation of the laws of physics, and doesn't need intelligent intervention, thank you. When a drop of water freezes into an exquisite snowflake, there is no sentience that guides it. It simply follows the path of least resistance. So too is life, and by extension, intelligence. We feel a bias towards free will because our very sense of self is derived from the ingrained feeling that our thoughts precede our actions. Oh, but do they? As the book rehashes, Libet was one of the first to test this idea emprically, and found that the sequence of electrical events in the brain that accompanied actions always began a noticeable amount of time before the conscious awareness of initiating an action. In the big picture, the vast majority of our actions are mediated by subconscious output, with a trickle of actions being refined by conscious stimuli when we have no experience with a particular situation. It is this subconscious co-opting of thought that enables us to ride a bike, walk, talk, and so on, without the need to consciously consider the steps involved. We take this for granted, but, for example, victims of stroke often find that certain actions they could once do without thinking require considerable attention if not handled automatically. We discount the idea that our actions are mainly subconscious because of the very fact that we don't consciously think about them.
That there is no free will is also an elegant explanation for the obvious lack of free will that we can witness in ourselves and others every day. How often do addicts of all kinds (food, drugs, gambling) explain that they cannot control their actions? Or what about spouses who cheat, drawn up in the "heat of the moment"? The temporary insanity plea? Tourette's syndrome? Obsessive-compulsive actions? Our own nightly dream worlds? People are willing to accept that they are not in control of many aspects of their behavior, but fail to make the obvious leap that they are indeed not in control of any of it. Having done something that they did not want to do, people then expose another aspect of the brain's process of illusory control by rationalizing their actions ("Another beer won't kill me","my spouse drove me to cheating","biting my fingernails kills the time"). This is the brain tipping its hand to the cards it's playing. When we see this in an extreme form, we call it a pathology (alcoholism, OCD). When we experience it in more mundane ways, we call it our thought process.
The book spends a lot of time on social aspects of will as well. We're much more likely to do certain things in groups, as we surrender some of our control to that of the group. An obvious example of this are religious ceremonies. People can go into trancelike, convulsive states when they are "slain in the spirit" of God, which they attribute to outside agencies. No one ever questions, however, why one is never visited by God while shopping at Radio Shack.
All that said, the illusion of will has a purpose. It may be an illusion, but it's still an effective and convincing one. While we may not really have free will, we still experience it all the same, and there is no reason that we should behave any differently knowing this. Beyond a dimunition of our sense of selves that accompanies the loss of will, I think that another reflexive disgust people feel about the concept stems from the percieved lack of responsibility that it implies. If I'm not in control, why blame me for what I do? It doesn't really work that way, however. Free will or no, social pressures will still work to modify behavior in individuals. Indeed, our existing penal system works as it does because it shapes the development of our subconscious minds. More simply, we don't even have the free will to act as if we have no free will.
So after all this, the issue is moot. It doesn't matter how we work, just that we do. Perhaps the most useful application of this knowledge will be in shaping our approach to altering bad behaviors. Knowing that we have no will, we can predict our more addictive and reflexive behaviors more accurately. Practial applications would be avoiding situations in which we might cave in to temptations. By taking action before we lose our apparent will, we co-opt the problems associated with it, and those insights are easily worth the price of this book.

Daniel Wegner, (Harvard Professor of Psychology) has written a technical book that is readable, entertaining, enlightening. My introduction to Dr. Wegner was in "White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts". His sense of humor combined with his presentation of details put that book on my top ten list.

Since my primary interest is in spirituality, I was anxiously awaiting The Illusion of Conscious Will. In my opinion there is no topic that can be more seductive in the study of spirituality or philosophy. If we think we have "free-will" our thought-life takes one path, if we come down on the side of determinism (or predestination in some circles) our life will follow a different path. The author jumps right into the fray at the very start:

"So here you are reading a book on conscious will. How could this have happened? If [a team of scientific psychologists] had access to all the information they could ever want, the assumption of psychology is that they would uncover the mechanisms that give rise to all of your behavior and so could certainly explain why you picked up this book at this moment.
However, another way to explain the fact of your reading this book is just to say that you decided to pick up the book and begin reading. You consciously willed what you are doing"

A sample of topics cover everything from spirit possession, animals that communicate, hypnosis, morality, and a host of other topics including a brief but interesting insight regarding a confession by the Amazing Kreskin.

Since my background is not in psychology, this became a challenging read but always entertaining. At the very least you will be impressed with how psychologists approach a problem that philosophers and theologians have debated for a thousand years. But if you are like me, this book is destined to change your outlook on life.

The Illusion of Conscious Will will radically change your view of human behavior, including your own. It manages to controvert the most basic of our intuitive assumptions about our actions and decisions -- that they are governed by our conscious thought processes. Wegner presents ample anecdotal and scientific evidence to suggest that what we call consciousness is just a byproduct of our underlying, unconscious decision making process. And, what is more, he does so with an entertaining and readily accessible writing style. A great read for anyone who is interested in learning why they do what they do!

Wegner makes the case for the idea that our conscious mind is the interpreter rather than the author of our actions, that our sense that our conscious mind is "in charge" is illusory, and that what we perceive to be our motivation for action is at best an educated guess by a neural system that has little or no access to those motivations. His argument boils down to generalizing a couple of well established facts: 1) there are detectable electrical events in the brain that precede our awareness that we have made a decision, implying that awareness of the decision follows rather than motivates the decision. 2) there are many circumstances in which we may take action without being conscious of making a decision to do so, and likewise situations in which we may feel that an action is the result of a decision when in fact we have done nothing. So far, so good. It is likely that our experience of consciousness simply requires too much computation, too many synaptic delays, for it to be fast enough to control our actions reliably in a world in which promptness is often at a premium.

But it seems to me that Wegner begs the more interesting question of what influence, if any, our conscious mind has over our actions. If we accept that our conscious decisions are not the proximate cause of our actions, what influence does the conscious mind have over our behavior? After all, I can program a computer to take an action at a later time, without my direct intervention. So it is possible that while our conscious mind's experience of being the immediate author of our actions is illusory, it remains possible that our conscious mind is more indirectly in control--in essence, programming our unconscious mind. Wegner speaks of the importance of having a mental plan in creating one's sense of authorship over one's actions, but he does not address the possibility that that plan may influence those actions.

The start of this book is excellent. Wegner begins by explaining what criteria have to be met for us to feel we have done something freely. These include: 1) a thought precedes an action (usually just before). 2) the thought always precedes the action 3) the action always follows the thought. He explains why this provides an illusion of freely chosen action. First, he gives examples of situations where people feel they are willing action, but someone else in fact, controls the action. The examples are amazing!! Then he gives many examples when people are controlling the action, but feel they are not. He finishes by concluding that free will is an emotion that allows us to keep track of our own actions and thus makes it possible for us to learn from our actions and keep track of who does what. He likens this sense of free will to a speedometer that is helping to measure a link between thought and action, but explains that the feeling of will is not itself causal.

First, I think Wegner should include in his list of criteria for us to conclude we have willed action this idea: That we cannot attribute the action to forces outside our control, including overwhelming emotions (passions, if you will) and external physical causes. He doesn't say this outright though much of the book IS devoted to explaining this idea.

Wegner agrees that thoughts can "cause" actions, but that the feeling of choosing does not. The problem I have with the book is that, at the end, he fails to stand firmly behind the conclusions that surely must follow from all he has said. We do not control our thoughts any more than our actions is the only logical conclusion. Thus our ideas of morality are based on an illusion.

We must also conclude that people's reports on their mental states are almost never accurate. Such reports of mental states thus have no place in a court of law for example.

Wegner seems to use the idea of a guilty conscience as an indication that the person knew what he was doing when he did it. I strongly disagree. He may have acted unconsciously and later realized his behavior was inconsistent with his beliefs. A guilty mind, in my view, should be a sign of a person who is less likely to act in a bad way again, not more worthy of blame. For example, sociopaths will never have a guilty mind, and are the ones most likely to repeat harmful behavior

I think we have to fall back on the position of Gilbert Ryle, the only real clues we have to a person¡¦s mental state (including our own) is behavior. By this criteria, anyone who shows behavioral signs of genuine remorse (we could be fooled by very good actors, but usually when people fake someone can see it--there will be some inconsistency in behavior) is providing clues that the person did something he did not feel was morally right and it is also an indicator that, unless they have an uncontrollable compulsion, they will be more likely to avoid the behavior in the future. Feelings of remorse, if strong, should act as a deterrent (Wegner does suggest this).

In the end Wegner is unable to give up on the idea that we WILL our actions. He devotes a book to saying this is an illusion, but ultimately he does not want to give up on will as a causal force and that was a disappointment

This book seeks to make the case that the experience of conscious will, although seeming to cause our actions, does not. The argument presented in doing this is broad-ranging, covering topics in philosophy, clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, child development, and social psychology.

Like his Harvard Colleague Daniel Gilbert, Daniel Wegner has the dual gifts of being a gifted researcher and gifted writer. There is insufficient space in a brief review to outline all the arguments raised by this book, or all the topics covered. The good ideas come thick and fast, but are presented with sufficient clarity that they should be understandable to most intelligent readers, even those without an extensive background in psychology or philosophy.

On top of his writing and research, Wegner's ability to theorize from the evidence and consider evidence in light of theory is outstanding. A great deal of the research Wegner reports in this book is his own. In addition, he does a masterful job of scouring current and historical literature for interesting examples to support his case.

There are some good concise summaries of the arguments made in this book in academic psychology articles by Wegner. Some of which can be downloaded from his homepage: these may provide a good start if you are presently unsure about buying the book. I think people who enjoy Daniel Dennett's philosophical writings on consciousness would enjoy this book.

I found the book via on online discussion group, as such it is not in a field that i feel particularly able to judge the quality of the work, or where it fits into the overall field.

The book is an extended discussion of the question: "do we consciously cause what happens to us? or as the author puts the question- is the experience of consciously willing an action and the causation of the action by the person's conscious mind the same thing?" pg.3 The book feels like a dialogue between a psychologist and a brain researcher with a philosopher as umpire. The overall structure of the book is particularly good as the author avoids the great temptation to stray from his point while he investigates weird and interesting behaviors, it is to his great credit that the book makes good sense and continues to hammer away at his main point. All the while exploring related avenues of information that might have derailed the study.

The book, at least for me with my limited background in the issues, is rather self authenticating. So i would like to share several very good quotes:

"The real and apparent casual sequences relating thought and action probably do tend to correspond with each other some proportion of the time. After all, people are pretty good information processors when given access to the right information. The occurrence of conscious intention prior to action is often wonderful information because it provides a fine clue as to how things that are on the person' mind might pertain to what the person does. In fact, the mental system that introduces throughts of action to mind and keeps them coordinated with the actions is itself an intriguing mechanism. However, if conscious will is an experience that arises from the interpretation of clues to cognitive casuality, then apparent mental causation is generated by an interpretive process that is fundamentally separate from the mechanistic process of real mental causation. The experience of will can be an indication that mind is causing action, especially if the person is a good self-interpreter, but it is not conclusive." pg 96

"The phenomena of dissociative identity disorder reminds us that our familiar subjective sense of being and doing are open to remarkable transformations. The self is not locked into place somewhere an inch or so behind our eyes, a fixture in the mind. Rather, the agent self is a fabrication put in place by the mechanisms of thought, a virtual agent that has experiences and feels as though it is doing things but that could conceivably be replaced by some other virtual agent that is implemented in the same mind. The experience of consciously willing an action is something that happens in a virtual agent, not in a brain or mind. The sense of being an agent creates our sense of subjective self and identity." pg 263

"Conscious will is the somatic marker of personal authorship, an emotion that authenticates the action's owner as the self. With the feeling of doing an act, we get a conscious sensation of will attached to the action. Often, this marker is quite correct. In many cases, we have intentions that preview our action, and we draw causal inferences linking our thoughts and actions in ways that track quite well our own psychological processes. Our experiences of will, in other words, often do correspond correctly with the empirical will--the actual casual connection between our thought and action. The experience of will then serves to mark the moment and in memory the actions that have been singled out in this way. We know them as ours, as authored by us, because we have felt ourselves doing them. This helps us to tell the difference between things we're doing and all the other things that are happening in and around us. In the melee of actions that occur in daily life, and in the social interaction of self with others, this body-based signature is a highly useful tool. We resonate with what we do, whereas we only notice what otherwise happens or what others have done. Thus, we can keep track of our own contributions without pencils or tally sheets." pg 327

And from the concluding page, 342, " Sometimes how things seem is more important than what they are. This is true in theater, in art, in used car sales, in economics, and -- it now turns out-- in the scientific analysis of conscious will. The fact is, it seems to each of us that we have conscious will . It seems we have selves. It seems we have minds. It seems we are agents. It seems we cause what we do. Although it is sobering and ultimately accurate to call all this an illusion, it is a mistake to conclude that the illusory is trivial. On the contrary, the illusions piled atop apparent mental causation are the building blocks of human psychology and social life. It is only with the feeling of conscious will that we can being to solve the problems of knowing who we are as individuals, of discerning what we can and cannot do, and of judging ourselves morally right or wrong for what we have done."

From these you can conclude for yourself the author's position on the question of the book. From them as well you can determine the quality of the writing and the level of the argumentation. For my part, i found the time i spent understanding the author's argument constructive, the examples illuminating and most interesting, despite being a scientific writing it held my interest and was emotionally as well as intellectually fulfilling. I hope you find it likewise.

thanks for reading the review, i would certainly invite recommendation for further reading on this topic. send to [local website]

A fascinating empirical account of how the conscious will works. Psychological theories are rarely based on so much experimental evidence. This could very well change your views on what it means to say that "you" are in control of your mind. However, the final impact of his theory is very subtle: your mind does create an "illusion" of conscious will, so as to keep track of your feelings and reactions and keep them in order. So it does make sense, in a very real way, to talk about "exercising" will, or to "strengthen" your will. It affirms and deepens your sensation of "will", instead of dismissing it. A very subtle and provocative work.