A book with this
title is likely to cause a reaction even before you read it. Some will
immediately dismiss it as more of the obviously wrong idea that, despite
appearances, iron laws rule our behaviour, while others will welcome it as a
much-needed thump on our grandiose convictions of free-will. Those who
actually read the book may very well be surprised to find out that Daniel
Wegner is not so much concerned with taking sides on the subject of free-will
vs. determinism, but rather in providing a psychological theory of how the
experience of conscious will arises in us and how reliable it is in tracking
down the causes of our behaviour. To be sure, the book is of direct relevance to
all those interested in the more traditional puzzles about the nature of free
will but warning should be made that what you’ll find here is mostly on the
theme of mental causation.

This said, the
word ‘illusion’ in the title is revealing enough of what Wegner has to say
about our experience of consciously willing our actions (or, more rigorously
put, about our subjective conviction that some of our actions have their causal
origin in prior conscious intentions to perform them, while others sort of
happen to us). His view is that “the experience of consciously willing an
action is not a direct indication that the conscious thought has caused the
action” (p.2, italics in the original), and the book does a good job of
supporting that claim with empirical studies showing how our experience of
consciously willing (or not) an action often bears little relation to the
actual causes of the action. While at times we will claim authorship for
actions we could not possibly have caused, others we will dismiss authorship for
actions that clearly have been cause by us. Particularly instructive in this
respect are Wegner’s analyses of automatisms (i.e., actions we would deny
having consciously willed) such as ‘table turning’, ‘pendulum divining’ and
‘automatic writing’, and action projection (chapters 4 and 6, respectively).
Equally interesting is his exploration of the ‘ideal agent’, someone who always
knows his actions prior to their occurrence (Chapter 5). The use of the term
‘illusion’ to characterize the experience of conscious will is, thus, justified
by the fact that first-person impressions of agency are not by themselves
guarantee that the subject is indeed the cause of a particular action.

Now, if Wegner’s
objective was simply to remind us that we are not the ‘ideal agents’ we
like to portray ourselves as, then all I’d have to say about this book is that
it provides for good reading, and you’ll certainly learn a thing or two about
the complexities of voluntary behaviour, but don’t expect to be tremendously
surprised by the overall message of the book. I, for one, find his case against
first-person authority regarding conscious actions somewhat old-news and
hardly contentious since studies showing that we put an unjustifiable amount of
trust in personal reports of conscious agency (or lack thereof) have been
around for a while and, I should think, are fairly well known among the
expected audience this book. Wegner, however, does have more to say about
conscious will and it is precisely when he gets to the mechanics of the illusion
that I find him at his most interesting and controversial.

Rather broadly
put, Wegner’s picture of what’s behind the illusion of conscious will involves
two independent sets of brain mechanisms, one effectively establishing a causal
link from thoughts to actions and another giving rise to the experience of will
via a process of interpretation of the possible role that thoughts available
to consciousness play in the production of our actions. Given that the
‘interpretative mechanism’ doesn’t have direct access to the production of
voluntary action but must instead infer what role the mind played in it, it
shouldn’t be surprising if at times the experience of having consciously willed
(or not) a particular action affords little evidence as to whether we in fact
caused the action. In other words, there are occasions when what’s present
to consciousness inclines us to claim or dismiss authorship for certain
actions, but a person’s reported experience of will is not the last word on the
actual causes of her actions.

Those perhaps more
widely read in the literature on consciousness will easily recognise here what
Daniel Dennett in his Consciousness Explained the Cartesian Theatre
model, i.e., the idea that the brain somehow puts up a show to convince the
self that he’s in the driver’s seat when in fact he’s not. Together with other
theorists if the will (e.g., Libet, Hoffman and Prinz), Wegner seems ultimately
unable to escape the temptation of positing a little screen in the mind where the
self comes to be informed of what’s happening with(in) it. The much that this
leaves explained regarding the interpretative process supposed to underlie the
experience of will (for example, we’re told close to nothing of how thoughts
potentially available to consciousness get selected to ‘enter’ in it), plus the
anatomical implausibility of Wegner’s picture, makes me think that this is a
book that ultimately wastes a good opportunity to truly demystify one of our
most endearing myths regarding the mind.

© 2002 Isabel Gois

Isabel Gois is a PhD student at King’s
College London working on Consciousness. Her research interests include
Philosophy of Mind, Neuropsychology, and Mental Disorder. She has articles
published on Emotions, Computationalism, and Consciousness.

Categories: Philosophical