Abstract

Do 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. The first edition of this book proposed an innovative and provocative answer: the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain; it helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, the book says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion (“the most compelling illusion”), it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. This new edition includes a foreword and an introduction. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, the book examines cases both when people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing and when they are not willing an act that they in fact are doing in such phenomena as hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, and dissociative identity disorder. The author's argument was immediately controversial (called “unwarranted impertinence” by one scholar) but also compelling, and the book has been called the author's magnum opus.

Keywords

IllusionArgument (complex analysis)FeelingFree willPsychologyConsciousnessEpistemologySocial psychologyPhilosophyCognitive psychology

Affiliated Institutions

Related Publications

The Cultural Politics of Emotion

A bold take on the crucial role of emotion in politics GBS_insertPreviewButtonPopup(['ISBN: 9780748691135','ISBN: 9780748691442']); What do emotions do? How do emotions move us ...

2014 Edinburgh University Press eBooks 7531 citations

Judgment Misguided

Abstract People often follow intuitive principles of decision making, ranging from group loyalty to the belief that nature is benign. But instead of using these principles as ru...

1998 140 citations

Publication Info

Year
2018
Type
book
Citations
1661
Access
Closed

External Links

Social Impact

Altmetric

Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions

Citation Metrics

1661
OpenAlex
32
CrossRef

Cite This

Daniel M. Wegner, Daniel T. Gilbert, Thalia Wheatley (2018). The Illusion of Conscious Will. The MIT Press eBooks . https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262534925.001.0001

Identifiers

DOI
10.7551/mitpress/9780262534925.001.0001

Data Quality

Data completeness: 77%