Wegner presents diverse, persuasive, and entertaining evidence for his thesis that the experience of conscious will is an illusion. Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology, The Neurosciences Institute This book will stand as a challenge to anyone trying to understand the nature of voluntary thought and action. His arguments are based on clever experiments and deep analysis of the issues. In this book, Wegner boldly pursues the claim that our sense of conscious agency is ALWAYS imaginary. Wellcome Department of Imaging Science, Institute of Neurology, University College Londonĭaniel Wegner is our foremost modern investigator of illusions of conscious agency-our tendency to believe that we really have more control over our own actions and thoughts than we do. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in how the mind works. He persuasively argues that our experience of will is an illusion, but that this illusions is crucial for our concepts of morality and personal responsibility. Wegner presents the facts about our experience of controlling our own actions.
Philosophers have argues for centuries about the existence of free will. Program in Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College This book will serve as the foundation for an untold number of hot debates on who is in charge of our personal destinies. He brings all the pieces together to tackle the problem of free will. Wegner has written a devishly clever, witty, and thorough book.
The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. He looks at illusions of the will-those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality.Īpproaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism.ĭo we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism.