Daniel M. Wegner
Department of Psychology, Harvard University

 

We often consciously will our own actions. This experience is so profound that it tempts us to s way of estimating its own apparent authorship by drawing causal inferences about relationships between thoughts and actions. Cognitive, social, and neuropsychological studies of apparent mental causation suggest that experiences of conscious will frequently depart from actual causal processes and so might not reflect direct perceptions of conscious thought causing action.

Does consciousness cause action? Many people think that even asking this question is absurd. How could consciousness not cause what we do? Every few moments of every day, we think about doing something and then do it. We think of moving a finger and then do it, we think of going to the store for milk and do it, we think of looking away from this page – and then do it. It certainly doesn’t take a rocket scientist to draw the obvious conclusion from a lifelong accumulation of such examples: consciousness is an active force, an engine of will…