Free Will Definition
Question 1
“The unique human convenience of conscious thoughts that preview our actions gives us the privilege of feeling we wilfully cause what we do. In fact, unconscious and inscrutable mechanisms create both conscious thought about action and create the action as well, and also produce the sense of will we experience by perceiving the thought as the cause of action… Believing that our conscious thoughts cause our actions is an error based on the illusory experience of will ...” (italics added; pp. 490)
Reference: Wegner, D. M. & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent Mental Causation: Sources of the Experience of Will. American Psychologist, 54, 480-492.
Read this paper, and briefly discuss whether the phenomena of consciousness discussed …show more content…
This view is supported by Gazzaniga’s (2011) study on split-brain patients. The patient will usually stand up when the relatively nonverbal right hemisphere is shown the word “stand”. However, due to the limitations of the right hemisphere in processing language, the patient will be consciously unaware of having read the word, and provides having felt the need to stretch as the reason for standing up. The source of experienced will as shown by this example is the intention formed by the mind – feeling the need to stretch, after the awareness of the commitment to a choice of action – to stand up, while the actual and unconscious cause of action is actually having read the word with the right hemisphere. This supports the idea that conscious will may arise from a theory designed to account for the regular relationship between thought and action and it also fits the Model of Conscious Will (Figure 1) proposed by Wegner and Wheatley …show more content…
Ammon and Gandevia’s (1990) research shows that the brain can be manipulated to make an unusual choice without disrupting the individual’s sense of free will. Right-handed people normally use their right hands 60% of the time or more when forced to use one hand over the other, but when researchers exposed right-handed subjects’ right hemispheres to transcranial magnetic stimulation, they chose to use their left hands 80% of the time and reported feeling completely in control of their hand movements. This research shows that although the brain has already committed to a movement due to external stimulation, the participants can still feel a conscious sense of deciding to move. Hence it shows that our conscious thought does not need to cause our actions for it to result in an experience of
“The unique human convenience of conscious thoughts that preview our actions gives us the privilege of feeling we wilfully cause what we do. In fact, unconscious and inscrutable mechanisms create both conscious thought about action and create the action as well, and also produce the sense of will we experience by perceiving the thought as the cause of action… Believing that our conscious thoughts cause our actions is an error based on the illusory experience of will ...” (italics added; pp. 490)
Reference: Wegner, D. M. & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent Mental Causation: Sources of the Experience of Will. American Psychologist, 54, 480-492.
Read this paper, and briefly discuss whether the phenomena of consciousness discussed …show more content…
This view is supported by Gazzaniga’s (2011) study on split-brain patients. The patient will usually stand up when the relatively nonverbal right hemisphere is shown the word “stand”. However, due to the limitations of the right hemisphere in processing language, the patient will be consciously unaware of having read the word, and provides having felt the need to stretch as the reason for standing up. The source of experienced will as shown by this example is the intention formed by the mind – feeling the need to stretch, after the awareness of the commitment to a choice of action – to stand up, while the actual and unconscious cause of action is actually having read the word with the right hemisphere. This supports the idea that conscious will may arise from a theory designed to account for the regular relationship between thought and action and it also fits the Model of Conscious Will (Figure 1) proposed by Wegner and Wheatley …show more content…
Ammon and Gandevia’s (1990) research shows that the brain can be manipulated to make an unusual choice without disrupting the individual’s sense of free will. Right-handed people normally use their right hands 60% of the time or more when forced to use one hand over the other, but when researchers exposed right-handed subjects’ right hemispheres to transcranial magnetic stimulation, they chose to use their left hands 80% of the time and reported feeling completely in control of their hand movements. This research shows that although the brain has already committed to a movement due to external stimulation, the participants can still feel a conscious sense of deciding to move. Hence it shows that our conscious thought does not need to cause our actions for it to result in an experience of