This article addresses two influential lines of argument for what might be termed “scientific epiphenomenalism” about conscious intentions – the thesis that neither conscious intentions nor their physical correlates are among the causes of bodily motions – and links this thesis to skepticism about free will and moral responsibility. One line of argument is based on Benjamin Libet’s neuroscientific work on free will. The other is based on a mixed bag of findings presented by social psychologist Daniel Wegner. It is (...) argued that both lines of argument are unsuccessful. (shrink)

Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Without our ability to discover and empirically test causal theories, we would not have made progress in various empirical sciences. In the past decades, the important role of causal knowledge has been discovered in many areas of cognitive (...) psychology. Despite the ubiquity of causal reasoning, textbooks of cognitive psychology have neglected this growing field. The goal of The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning is to fill this gap. The handbook brings together the leading researchers in the field of causal reasoning and offers state-of-the-art presentations of theories and research. It provides introductions of competing theories of causal reasoning, and discusses its role in various cognitive functions and domains. The final section presents research from neighboring fields. 1. Causal Reasoning: An Introduction Michael R. Waldmann Part I: Theories of Causal Cognition 2. Associative Accounts of Causal Cognition Mike E. Le Pelley, Oren Griffiths, and Tom Beesley 3. Rules of Causal Judgment: Mapping Statistical Information Onto Causal Beliefs José C. Perales, Andrés Catena, Antonio Cándido, and Antonio Maldonado 4. The Inferential Reasoning Theory of Causal Learning: Toward a Multi- Process Propositional Account Yannick Boddez, Jan De Houwer, and Tom Beckers 5. Causal Invariance as an Essential Constraint for Creating a Causal Representation of the World: Generalizing the Invariance of Causal Power Patricia W. Cheng and Hongjing Lu 6. The Acquisition and Use of Causal Structure Knowledge Benjamin Margolin Rottman 7. Formalizing Prior Knowledge in Causal Induction Thomas L. Griffiths 8. Causal Mechanisms Samuel G. B. Johnson and Woo-kyoung Ahn 9. Force Dynamics and Causation Phillip Wolff and Robert Thorstad 10. Mental Models and Causation P. N. Johnson- Laird and Sangeet S. Khemlani 11. Pseudocontingencies Klaus Fiedler and Florian Kutzner 12. Singular Causation David Danks 13. Cognitive Neuroscience of Causal Reasoning Joachim T. Operskalski and Aron K. Barbey Part II: Basic Cognitive Functions 14. Visual Impressions of Causality Peter White 15. Goal-Directed Actions Bernhard Hommel 16. Planning and Control Magda Osman 17. Reinforcement Learning and Causal Models Samuel J. Gershman 18. Causation and the Probability of Causal Conditionals David E. Over 19. Causal Models and Conditional Reasoning Mike Oaksford and Nick Chater 20. Concepts as Causal Models: Categorization Bob Rehder 21. Concepts as Causal Models: Induction Bob Rehder 22. Causal Explanation Tania Lombrozo and Nadya Vasilyeva 23. Diagnostic Reasoning Björn Meder and Ralf Mayrhofer 24. Inferring Causal Relations by Analogy Keith J. Holyoak and Hee-Seung Lee 25. Causal Argument Ulrike Hahn, Roland Bluhm, and Frank Zenker 26. Causality in Decision- Making York Hagmayer and Philip M. Fernbach Part III: Domains of Causal Reasoning 27. Intuitive Theories Tobias Gerstenberg and Joshua B. Tenenbaum 28. Space, Time, and Causality Marc J. Buehner 29. Causation in Legal and Moral Reasoning David A. Lagnado and Tobias Gerstenberg 30. The Role of Causal Knowledge in Reasoning About Mental Disorders Woo-kyoung Ahn, Nancy S. Kim, and Matthew S. Lebowitz 31. Causality and Causal Reasoning in Natural Language Torgrim Solstad and Oliver Bott 32. Social Attribution and Explanation Denis Hilton Part IV: Development, Phylogeny, and Culture 33. The Development of Causal Reasoning Paul Muentener and Elizabeth Bonawitz 34. Causal Reasoning in Non-Human Animals Christian Schloegl and Julia Fischer 35. Causal Cognition and Culture Andrea Bender, Sieghard Beller, and Douglas L. Medin. (shrink)

The conscious awareness of voluntary action is associated with systematic changes in time perception: The interval between actions and outcomes is experienced as compressed in time. Although this temporal binding is thought to result from voluntary movement and provides a window to the sense of agency, recent studies challenge this idea by demonstrating binding in involuntary movement. We offer a potential account for these findings by proposing that binding between involuntary actions and effects can occur when self-causation is implied. Participants (...) made temporal judgements concerning a key press and a tone, while they learned to consider themselves as the cause of the effect or not. Results showed that implied self-causation increased temporal binding. Since intrinsic motor cues of movement were absent, these results suggest that sensory evidence about the key press caused binding in retrospect and in line with the participant’s sense of being an agent. (shrink)

It is nearly 10 years since Patrick Haggard and colleagues first reported the ‘intentional binding’ effect . The intentional binding effect refers to the subjective compression of the temporal interval between a voluntary action and its external sensory consequence. Since the first report, considerable interest has been generated and a fascinating array of studies has accumulated. Much of the interest in intentional binding comes from the promise to shed light on human agency. In this review we survey studies on intentional (...) binding, focusing, in particular, on the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency . We suggest that, whilst it is yet to be fully explicated, the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency is compelling. We conclude by considering outstanding questions and future directions for research on intentional binding. (shrink)

The discovery of so-called ‘mirror neurons’ - found to respond both to own actions and the observation of similar actions performed by others - has been enormously influential in the cognitive sciences and beyond. Given the self-other symmetry these neurons have been hypothesized as underlying a ‘mirror mechanism’ that lets us share representations and thereby ground core social cognitive functions from intention understanding to linguistic abilities and empathy. I argue that mirror neurons are important for very different reasons. Rather than (...) a symmetric ubiquitous or context- independent mechanism, I propose that these neurons are part of broader sensorimotor circuits, which help us navigate and predict the social affordance space that we meet others in. To develop both the critical and positive project I analyze the interpretive choices and the debate surrounding the mirror neuron research and show how the field is marred by highly questionable assumptions about respectively motor and social cognition. The discovery of mirror neurons - and the sensorimotor circuits of which these neurons are a part – actually empirically challenge many of these tacit assumptions. Findings of sensorimotor goal representations at levels of abstraction well beyond actual sensory information and kinetic movements challenge the idea of motor cognition as primarily output production. Additionally, the focus on 3rd person mindreading of hidden mental states is misguiding the field of social cognition. Much ‘mind-reading’ seems rooted in sensorimotor representations and a developmentally primary 2nd person understanding of actions and the mental lives of others, which precisely breaks the assumed dichotomy between mind and behavior. I propose a Social Affordance model where parallel fronto-parietal sensorimotor circuits support representations not just of other people’s actions but of the overall social affordance space. It is a process that monitors concrete goals and teleological possibilities that the environment affords respectively oneself and other present agents. With this model I hypothesize that the complex spectrum of sensorimotor integrations are indeed essential not only to normal action choice calibration but also to social cognitive abilities, as the sensorimotor teleological representations let us relate to others and understand their action choices in a shared pragmatic and intentional context. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers and psychologists have claimed that the explanation that grounds both passivity phenomena in the cognitive domain and passivity phenomena that occur with respect to overt actions is, along broad lines, the same. Furthermore, they claim that the best account we have of such phenomena in both scenarios is the “comparator” account. However, there are reasons to doubt whether the comparator model can be exported from the realm of overt actions to the cognitive domain in general. There is (...) a lingering worry concerning such explanations of thought insertion: the "What is compared to what?" problem. Here I examine two ways to tackle this problem. First: thought insertion consists of the misattribution of strings of inner speech which are not attenuated (thought insertion is thus another name for auditory verbal hallucinations). Second: thought insertion is misattributed inner speech which exhibits the same phenomenological characteristics as normal inner speech. After explaining the types of problem that each of these potential solutions faces, I conclude with a set of open questions that the comparator theorist has to tackle. (shrink)

It is typically assumed that while we know other people’s mental states by observing and interpreting their behavior, we know our own mental states by introspection, i.e., without interpreting ourselves. In his latest book, The opacity of mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge, Peter Carruthers (2011) argues against this assumption. He holds that findings from across the cognitive sciences strongly suggest that self-knowledge of conscious propositional attitudes such as intentions, judgments, and decisions involves a swift and unconscious process of self-interpretation (...) that utilizes the same sensory channels that we employ when working out other people’s mental states. I provide an overview of Carruthers’ book before discussing a pathological case that challenges his account of self-knowledge and mentioning empirical evidence that undermines his use of a particular kind of data in his case against introspection of conscious attitudes. (shrink)

Shaun Gallagher has actively looked into the possibility that psychopathologies involving “thought insertion” might supply a counterexample to the Cartesian principle according to which one can always recognize one’s own thoughts as one’s own. Animated by a general distrust of a priori demonstrations, Gallagher is convinced that pitting clinical cases against philosophical arguments is a worthwhile endeavor. There is no doubt that, if true, a falsification of the immunity to error through misidentification would entail drastic revisions in how we conceive (...) the boundary between self and other. However, I argue that (1) the idea of unearthing an exception to the Cartesian thesis is, on further reflection, not a realistic prospect and that (2) this casts doubt on the attempt to conjoin first-person phenomenology and third-person cognitive science in the service of philosophical debates. (shrink)

This is a bibliography of books and articles on consciousness in philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience over the last 30 years. There are three main sections, devoted to monographs, edited collections of papers, and articles. The first two of these sections are each divided into three subsections containing books in each of the main areas of research. The third section is divided into 12 subsections, with 10 subject headings for philosophical articles along with two additional subsections for articles in cognitive (...) science and neuroscience. Of course the division is somewhat arbitrary, but I hope that it makes the bibliography easier to use. This bibliography has first been compiled by Thomas Metzinger and David Chalmers to appear in print in two philosophical anthologies on conscious experience . From 1995 onwards it has been continuously updated by Thomas Metzinger, and now is freely available as a PDF-, RTF-, or HTML-file. This bibliography mainly attempts to cover the Anglo-Saxon and German debates, in a non-annotated, fully formatted way that makes it easy to "cut and paste" from the original file. To a certain degree this bibliography also contains items in other languages than English and German - all submissions in other languages are welcome. Last update of current version: July 13th, 2001. (shrink)

It has been proposed that inferring personal authorship for an event gives rise to intentional binding, a perceptual illusion in which one’s action and inferred effect seem closer in time than they otherwise would . Using a novel, naturalistic paradigm, we conducted two experiments to test this hypothesis and examine the relationship between binding and self-reported authorship. In both experiments, an important authorship indicator – consistency between one’s action and a subsequent event – was manipulated, and its effects on binding (...) and self-reported authorship were measured. Results showed that action-event consistency enhanced both binding and self-reported authorship, supporting the hypothesis that binding arises from an inference of authorship. At the same time, evidence for a dissociation emerged, with consistency having a more robust effect on self-reports than on binding. Taken together, these results suggest that binding and self-reports reveal different aspects of the sense of authorship. (shrink)

After a long period of neglect, the phenomenology of action has recently regained its place in the agenda of philosophers and scientists alike. The recent explosion of interest in the topic highlights its complexity. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework allowing for a more precise characterization of the many facets of the phenomenology of agency, of how they are related and of their possible sources. The key assumption guiding this attempt is that the processes through (...) which the phenomenology of action is generated and the processes involved in the specification and control of action are strongly interconnected. I argue in favor of a three-tiered dynamic model of intention, link it to an expanded version of the internal model theory of action control and specification, and use this theoretical framework to guide an analysis of the contents, possible sources and temporal course of complementary aspects of the phenomenology of action. (shrink)

Studies of perception have focussed on sensation, though more recently the perception of action has, once more, become the subject of investigation. These studies have looked at acute experimental situations. The present paper discusses the subjective experience of those with either clinical syndromes of loss of movement or sensation (spinal cord injury, sensory neuronopathy syndrome or motor stroke), or with experimental paralysis or sensory loss. The differing phenomenology of these is explored and their effects on intention and agency discussed. It (...) is shown that sensory loss can have effects on the focussing of motor command and that for some a sense of agency can return despite paralysis. (shrink)

A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England.

A sense of agency over wilful actions is thought to be dependent on the level of choice and the nature of the outcome. In a preregistered study, we manipulated choice and valence of outcome to assess the relationship between SoA across the depression and psychosis continuum. Participants completed a Libet Clock task, in which they had either a free or forced choice to press one of two buttons and received either a rewarding or punishing outcome. Participants also completed questionnaires on (...) depressive and psychosis-like traits. Rewarding outcomes increased intentional binding. The evidence favoured no effect of choice on average, but this was influenced by inter-individual differences. Individuals reporting more depressive traits had less of a difference in intentional binding between free and forced choice conditions. We show that implicit SoA is sensitive to outcome valence and the effect of choice differs across the depression continuum. (shrink)

Orthodox neurocognitive accounts of the bodily sense of agency suggest that the experience of agency arises when action-effects are anticipated accurately. In this paper, I argue that while successful anticipation is crucial for the sense of agency, the role of unsuccessful prediction has been neglected, and that inefficacy and uncertainty are no less central to the sense of agency. I will argue that this is reflected in the phenomenology of agency, which can be characterized both as the experience of efficacy (...) and effort. Specifically, the “sense of efficacy” refers to the perceptual experience of an action unfolding as anticipated. The “sense of effort”, in contrast, arises when an action has an uncertain trajectory, feels difficult, and demands the exertion of control. In this case, actions do not unfold as anticipated and require continuing adaptation if they are to be efficacious. I propose that, taken individually, the experience of efficacy and effort are insufficient for the sense of agency and that these experiences can even disrupt the sense of agency when they occur in isolation from each other. I further argue that a fully-fledged sense of agency depends on the temporally extensive process of prediction error-cancelation. This way, a comparator account can accommodate both the role of accurate prediction and prediction error and thus efficacy and effort. (shrink)

The thesis that consists of three studies investigated how visual affective stimuli or action as contexts influence crossmodal time processing, particularly on the role of the crossmodal/sensorimotor linkage in time perception. By using different types of emotional stimuli and manipulating the possibility of near-body interactions, three studies disassociated the impacts of embodied action from emotional dimensions on crossmodal emotional modulation in time perception. The whole thesis thus offered the first behavioral evidence that embodied action is an important factor that expands (...) subjective tactile duration and facilitates tactile selection in emotion and action contexts. Moreover, subjective expansion of duration by threat and action contexts may reflect the evolutionary coupling of our perceptual and motor systems to adapt to the specific environments for survival and success. (shrink)

While some are currently debating whether time may or may not be an illusion, others keep devoting their time to the science of consciousness. Time as such may be seen as a physical or a subjective variable, and the limitations in our capacity of perceiving and analyzing temporal order and change in physical events definitely constrain our understanding of consciousness which, in return, constrains our conceptual under-standing of time. Temporal codes generated in the brain have been considered as the key (...) to insight into neural function and, ultimately, as potential neural substrates of consciousness itself. On the basis of cur-rent evidence and opinion from neuroscience and philosophy, we consider the interrelation between con-sciousness and time in the light of Hegel and Heidegger’s concepts of Sein (Being) and Zeit (Time). We suggest that consciousness can be defined in terms of a succession of psychological moments where we realize that we exist in, and are part of, a present moment in time. This definition places all other percep-tual or sensorial processes which may characterize phenomenal experience at a different level of analysis and centers the debate around consciousness on the fundamental identity link between awareness of the Ich (I) and awareness of what Heidegger termed Ursprüngliche Zeit (original time). We argue that human consciousness has evolved from the ability to be aware of, to remember, and to predict temporal order and change in nature, and that the limits of this capacity are determined by limits in the functional plasticity of resonant brain mechanisms. Although the conscious state of the Self is the ultimate expression of this evolution, it is devoid of any adaptive function as such. (shrink)

In recent years, the integration of philosophical with scientific theorizing has started to yield new insights. This chapter surveys some recent philosophical and empirical work on the nature and structure of action, on conscious agency, and on our knowledge of actions.

We are perceivers, we are thinkers, and we are also agents, bringing about physical events, such as bodily movements and their consequences. What we do tells us, and others, a lot about who we are. On the one hand, who we are determines what we do. On the other hand, acting is also a process of self-discovery and self-shaping. Pivotal to this mutual shaping of self and agency is the sense of agency, or agentive self-awareness, i.e., the sense that one (...) is the agent of an action. (shrink)

A bodily self is characterized by pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness that is.

The empirical investigation of free will beliefs is a fascinating and extensive field, offering potential insights into the extent and ramifications of free will beliefs, but this research is not without its limitations. Many competing definitions of free will exist. These competing definitions have informed the variety of free will manipulations and measures currently used, often without researchers properly addressing the important differences in the understandings of free will being operationalised, manipulated and measured. These manipulations and measures are also typically (...) broad ranging, also including statements targeting determinism, reductionism and other related constructs. They therefore lack the focus necessary to identify just what aspect of these supposed free will manipulations are actually impacting cognitions, beliefs, and behaviours. Across 7 studies we address some of these limitations. Study 1 confirms past findings demonstrating that perceptions of having choice and being free from constraints are central to lay understandings of free will. Study 1 also tests new single item measures of free will and determinism. In studies 2 and 3 we use our new measure of lay free will, to demonstrate that the previously established utility of free will beliefs for predicting subjective wellbeing, is due to the perceptions of having control that form the core of lay free will beliefs. We then reason that, as pro deterministic/anti free will messages can undermine free will beliefs these manipulations may also impact perceived control and subsequently indicators of subjective wellbeing. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrate that an abridged version of the Crick essay, can undermine perceived control. This suggests that past successful manipulations of behaviour via the Crick essay, may have been due, at least in part, to reductions in perceived control rather than just free will beliefs. The Crick essay is a broad ranging, poorly focused manipulation, simultaneously championing determinism while undermining the idea of free will. We therefore then endeavour to create two new, better focused, manipulations of free will/determinism, with reduced demand characteristics. In study 6 our TMS manipulation lead to a significant reduction between participants’ pre and post manipulation scores but this was also true for participants in the neutral condition. These complex findings are explored, suggesting that placing participants in an intimidating environment may undermine their perceptions of having free will. In study 7 our deterministic video manipulation successfully undermines free will belief but does not undermine perceived control or self-efficacy. These findings are explored further with participants’ agreement with the deterministic or non-deterministic video lecture, moderating the impact of condition on participants’ ratings of free will, self-efficacy and perceived control. When compared to non-determinism, high agreement with determinism was associated with lower perceived control and free will belief. By contrast low agreement with determinism was associated with higher perceived control self-efficacy and free will. In study 1 we created a new measure of cheating/dishonesty that can be used online. In study 7 we used this new measure of cheating and contrary to our predictions, exposure to a deterministic argument led to less cheating than exposure to a non-deterministic argument. In the general discussion the various strands of research are brought together and their contribution to the literature discussed. The limitations of our research are explored with new ideas proposed to address those limitations and further our work. Taken together, the research outlined in this thesis provides valuable new insight into the nature and implications of beliefs relating to free will and determinism, provides a valuable critique of research in this field and offers suggestions to improve and extend the current literature. (shrink)

The sense of agency is the experience of being the origin of a sensory consequence. This study investigates whether contextual beliefs modulate low-level sensorimotor processes which contribute to the emergence of the sense of agency. We looked at the influence of causal beliefs on ‘intentional binding’, a phenomenon which accompanies self-agency. Participants judged the onset-time of either an action or a sound which followed the action. They were induced to believe that the tone was either triggered by themselves or by (...) somebody else, although, in reality, the sound was always triggered by the participants. We found that intentional binding was stronger when participants believed that they triggered the tone, compared to when they believed that another person triggered the tone. These results suggest that high-level contextual information influences sensorimotor processes responsible for generating intentional binding. (shrink)

I present an account of how agents can know what they are doing when they intentionally execute object-oriented actions. When an agent executes an object-oriented intentional action, she uses perception in such a way that it can fulfil a justificatory role for her knowledge of her own action and it can fulfil this justificatory role without being inferentially linked to the cognitive states that it justifies. I argue for this proposal by meeting two challenges: in an agent's knowledge of her (...) action perception can only play an enabling role (and no justificatory role) for the agent's knowledge and if perception has a justificatory role, then the agent's knowledge must be inferential. (shrink)

The feeling of acting voluntarily is a fundamental component of human behavior and social life and is usually accompanied by a sense of agency. However, this ability can be impaired in a number of diseases and disorders. An important example is apraxia, a disturbance traditionally defined as a disorder of voluntary skillful movements that often results from frontal-parietal brain damage. The first part of this article focuses on direct evidence of some core symptoms of apraxia, emphasizing those with connections to (...) agency and free will. The loss of agency in apraxia is reflected in the monitoring of internally driven action, in the perception of specifically self-intended movements and in the neural intention to act. The second part presents an outline of the evidences supporting the functional and anatomical link between apraxia and agency. The available structural and functional results converge to reveal that the frontal–parietal network contributes to the sense of agency and its impairment in disorders such as apraxia. The current knowledge on the generation of motor intentions and action monitoring could potentially be applied to develop therapeutic strategies for the clinical rehabilitation of voluntary action. (shrink)

Research Articles Michael S. Moore, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

Voluntary actions and their distal effects are intimately related in conscious awareness. When an expected effect follows a voluntary action, the experience of the interval between these events is compressed in time, a phenomenon known as ‘intentional binding’ . Current accounts of IB suggest that it serves to reinforce associations between our goals and our intention to attain these goals via action, and that IB only occurs for self-generated actions. We used a novel approach to study IB in the context (...) of shared intentions and actions. Pairs of participants judged the time of occurrence of actions and events attributed either to oneself or to another agent. We found that IB and subjective agency are not mutually predictive when an action can be attributed to only one of two ‘co-intending’ agents. Our results pose a complication for the prevailing view that IB and subjective agency reflect a common mechanism. (shrink)

The role of consciousness in the production of actions has received much attention from philosophy and neuroscience. Wegner claims that what he calls the conscious will plays no role in the causal production of human actions, and that it is just an illusion. I will argue that Wegner’s claim is mistaken, because his defense of the alleged illusion rests on how he conceives of what the Readiness Potential represents in a key experiment—Libet’s experiment—and this conception is mistaken. Therefore, Wegner has (...) not offered a convincing reason to believe that humans are deluded about the way they produce their actions. (shrink)

Intentional binding describes the phenomenon that actions and their effects are perceived to be temporally approximated. We introduced a new method of duration estimation to the research field, the method of constant stimuli. Participants freely chose to press one of two keys or experienced passive key presses. After an interval of 250 ms or 600 ms a visual effect occurred. In Experiment 1, each key produced an effect after a specific interval. In Experiment 2, both keys produced an effect after (...) the same interval that varied between sessions. Participants compared the duration of the action–effect interval with a tone of varying duration. To assess intentional binding, we compared the perceived duration of the action–effect interval between the active and passive condition. We showed intentional binding for 600 ms, but not for 250 ms action–effect intervals in both experiments. Thus, the method of constant stimuli is suitable to assess intentional binding. (shrink)

Patients with delusions of control are abnormally aware of the sensory consequences of their actions and have difficulty with on-line corrections of movement. As a result they do not feel in control of their movements. At the same time they are strongly aware of the action being intentional. This leads them to believe that their actions are being controlled by an external agent. In contrast, the normal mark of the self in action is that we have very little experience of (...) it. Most of the time we are not aware of the sensory consequences of our actions or of the various subtle corrections that we make during the course of goal-directed actions. We know that we are agents and that we are successfully causing the world to change. But as actors we move through the world like shadows glimpsed only occasional from the corner of an eye. (shrink)

The sense of agency is a central aspect of human self-consciousness and refers to the experience of oneself as the agent of one’s own actions. Several different cognitive theories on the sense of agency have been proposed implying divergent empirical approaches and results, especially with respect to neural correlates. A multifactorial and multilevel model of the sense of agency may provide the most constructive framework for integrating divergent theories and findings, meeting the complex nature of this intriguing phenomenon.

O papel da vontade consciente na produção de ações tem recebido bastante atenção tanto da filosofia como da neurociência. Wegner afirma que o que ele chama de vontade consciente não desempenha nenhum papel na produção causal das ações humanas, e que a mesma é apenas uma ilusão. Será argumentado no presente artigo que a afirmação de Wegner está equivocada, porque a sua defesa da suposta ilusão está fundamentada em como ele concebe o que o Potencial de Prontidão representa em um (...) experimento crucial – o experimento de Libet – e essa concepção está errada. Portanto, Wegner não oferece uma razão convincente para se crer que os seres humanos estão iludidos a respeito de como produzem suas ações. (shrink)