What are the distinctive psychological features that explain why humans are free, but many other creatures, such as simple animals, are not? It is natural to think that the answer has something to do with unique human capacities for decision-making. Philosophical discussions of how decision-making works, however, are tellingly incomplete. In particular, these discussions invariably presuppose an agent who has a mentally represented set of options already fully in hand. The emphasis is largely on the selective processes that identify the (...) options most worth doing and then execute them. But where do mentally represented sets of options come from in the first place? Once we focus on this constructive aspect of decision-making, an important fact becomes apparent: While the option sets of simpler animals are sharply limited, humans have a number of striking psychological powers—including remarkable powers of prospection and creativity—that enable them to construct option sets of unparalleled size and diversity. As a result, humans can express themselves in countless ways. This latitude for self-expression is, I argue, the distinctive feature that explains why humans are free. (shrink)

I discuss the suggestion that conscious will is an illusion. I take it to mean that there are no conscious decisions. I understand ‘conscious’ as accessible directly and ‘decision’ as the acquisition of an intention. I take the alternative of direct access to be access by interpreting behaviour. I start with a survey of the evidence in support of this suggestion. I argue that the evidence indicates that we are misled by external behaviour into making false positive and false negative (...) judgements about our own decisions. Then I turn to a challenge to this suggestion. What could we interpret in cases when there is no external behaviour? I propose the response that we interpret internal behaviour. We can understand internal behaviour as mental simulation of external behaviour, which can proceed by way of conscious mental imagery. I argue that the proposal has the following advantages. It helps us explain more evidence than we could otherwise. It relies mostly on mechanisms that we already have reason to believe in. And it receives support from the available neurological evidence. I also suggest a way to test the proposal in future empirical research. I conclude by discussing the limitations of the proposal and its implications for the wider debates about the imagination and the will. (shrink)

Five studies replicate and extend recent experimental findings on a divergence between theoretical and subjectively-experienced decision freedom. While conditions like conflict, uncertainty, or com...

The development of highly humanoid sex robots is on the technological horizon. If sex robots are integrated into the legal community as “electronic persons”, the issue of sexual consent arises, which is essential for legally and morally permissible sexual relations between human persons. This paper explores whether it is conceivable, possible, and desirable that humanoid robots should be designed such that they are capable of consenting to sex. We consider reasons for giving both “no” and “yes” answers to these three (...) questions by examining the concept of consent in general, as well as critiques of its adequacy in the domain of sexual ethics; the relationship between consent and free will; and the relationship between consent and consciousness. Additionally we canvass the most influential existing literature on the ethics of sex with robots. (shrink)

Do we have free will? Understanding free will as the ability to act freely, and free actions as exercises of this ability, I maintain that the default answer to this question is “yes.” I maintain that free actions are a natural kind, by relying on the influential idea that kinds are homeostatic property clusters. The resulting position builds on the view that agents are a natural kind and yields an attractive alternative to recent revisionist accounts of free action. My view (...) also overcomes difficulties confronted by previous views according to which free actions might be a natural kind. On my view, free actions exist and we often act freely, as long as we possess various features that are related in the right sorts of ways to each other and to the world. In turn, we acquire and retain the concept as long as most of us possess enough of those features. (shrink)