Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?

Abstract

Index vi ContentsDoes Consciousness Cause Behavior?dependent, but it is impossible in principle to say that either causes the other. Thus the whole concept of consciousness as agent is simply a misreading of the true situation.The chapters in part II (Philosophy) address the philosophical presuppositions the authors regard as having informed the empirical studies of motor control, action, and intention, and raise questions about what legitimately can be concluded from Libet's and Wegner's experimental results. One of the philosophical outcomes of Libet's experiments is that they might be taken as suggesting we do not have conscious free will. However, in chapter 6 Shaun Gallagher suggests that Libet's results show nothing about whether or not we have free will, because free will is a concept that does not apply to the movements Libet studied. Based on considerations of temporality and levels of description, Gallagher argues for a distinction between the initiation and control of movement, much of which is unconscious, and the conscious exercise of free will in intentional action. In chapter 7, Peter Ross considers what empirical science can contribute to an understanding of free will. He argues that empirical research cannot resolve the dispute between compatibilism and incompatibilism, although it can address the dispute between libertarianism (which claims that indeterminacy is, in certain contexts, sufficient for freedom) and the positions of hard determinism and compatibilism (which deny this). In chapter 8, Elisabeth Pacherie offers a sketch of a dynamic theory of intentions. She argues that several categories of intentions should be distinguished on the basis of their different functional roles and on the basis of the different types of contents they involve. To understand the distinctive nature of actions and intentionality requires a proper understanding of the dynamic transitions among these different categories of intentions. In this context Pacherie argues that the experiments conducted by Libet and Wegner fail to provide conclusive reasons to think that mental causation is generally illusory. In chapter 9,Timothy Bayne also offers a critical evaluation of Wegner's claim that the conscious will is an illusion. He argues that the content of the "experience of conscious will" is more complicated than has been assumed. He concludes that, although the role of the self and intentional states in the genesis of actions requires further explanation, it is unlikely that the phenomenology of agency is systematically misleading. There is little reason to think that our experience of ourselves as agents who do things for reasons leads us into error. In chapter 10, Alfred Mele develops a conceptual analysis of some of the concepts that inform the recent experimental studies of intentional action. Based on a distinction between unconscious urge and conscious decision, he suggests that the neural activity described by Libet's experiments may represent an urge to move rather than a decision to do so, and that the deci...

Neural precursors of decisions that matter—an ERP study of deliberate and arbitrary choice

“…In other words, our results put the onus on attempts to generalize markers of upcoming action from arbitrary to deliberate decisions; it is on them now to demonstrate that those markers do indeed generalize. And, given the extent of the claims made and conclusions derived based on the RP in the neuroscience of free will (see again Mele, 2015; Pockett et al, 2009; Sinnott-Armstrong and Nadel, 2011), our findings call for a re-examination of some of the basic tenents of the field.…”

“…Since the publication of Libet’s seminal work—which claimed that neural precursors of action, in the form of the RP, precede subjects’ reports of having consciously decided to act (Libet et al, 1983)—a vigorous discussion has been raging among neuroscientists, philosophers, and other scholars about the meaning of the RP for the debate on free will (recent collections include Mele, 2015; Pockett et al, 2009; Sinnott-Armstrong and Nadel, 2011). Some claim that the RP is simply a marker for an unconscious decision to act and thus its onset at least reflects an intention to move and ballistically leads to movement (Libet et al, 1983; Soon et al, 2008).…”

Toward a Better Understanding of Self-Construal Theory: An Agency View of the Processes of Self-Construal

“…2 Selfconstrual, we suggest, takes the assessment of self-agency as input and elaborates it in terms of information about the individual's access to power (as the cultural elaboration of agency), and in terms of broader cultural norms for action (see Figure 1). A variety of process models for the sense of self-agency has been offered (for reviews, see David et al, 2008;Pacherie, 2008;Pockett, Banks, & Gallagher, 2006;Roessler & Eilan, 2003). Our conceptualization of self-construal draws on two of their common qualities.…”

Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Scientific Epiphenomenalism

“…64–70). The following assertion sometimes is offered in support of the preceding one: Participants’ conscious proximal intentions to flex cannot be among the causes of their flexes because those intentions are caused by unconscious brain events (Pockett, 2006, p. 21; Roediger et al, 2008, p. 208). This assertion about mental causation is seriously confused (and, as a referee motivated me to add, I certainly am not claiming that many scientists do or would make it).…”

“…In their introduction to an edited volume entitled Does Consciousness Cause Behavior? Susan Pockett and her coeditors write: “the wide promulgation of two new lines of genuinely scientific... evidence has seized the philosophical and scientific imagination and again brought the whole question [whether consciousness causes behavior] to the forefront of intellectual debate” (Pockett et al, 2006, p. 1). They identify neuroscientist Benjamin Libet and social psychologist Daniel Wegner as the sources of these lines of evidence (pp.…”