Consciousness and Free Will

1. Consciousness and Free Will

2. So called easy problems • How does the brain or mind create the illusion of free will • How does the brain create subjective experience • a.k.a., consciousness

3. So called hard problems • Does the consciousness “cause” • Does the subjective experience of causation “cause” • Can the mind will or cause change in the world

4. Answers to hard problems • Descartes • Brain—body—materials don’t cause • Elusive mind—soul causes change to physical world • Side bar: can belief in a soul exist if you give up the illusion of free will?

5. Answers to the hard problem • Determinism

6. Answers to the hard problem • Evolutionarily possibilities • Vestigial structure • By product of an adaptive mechanism • Reference point

7. Answers to the hard problem • Damasio • Free will caused by apparatus • Brain stem fusing with brain • Self is byproduct of needing a reference • Stable reference judges events and record events via self reference • Feeling of experience stems from necessity of sophisticated, record keeping brain

8. Thoughts? • Can belief in a soul exist if you give up on free will? • Are determinist soul-less?

9. Wegner, the self is magic! • Consistency • Thought and action are consistent • Priority effects • Thought occurs just prior to the action • Exclusivity • There are no other apparent causes

10. Wegner, the self is magic! • Why believe in free will? • Social signaling • Signal aggression is cheaper than signaling aggression? • Self predicting vs. intending systems indistinguishable • Social Control • Guilt, blame, responsibility

11. Aarts & van den Bos (2011) • Premise: belief in free will is an individual difference • It should predict • Extent to which intention, outcome, and time bind to produce feeling of agency • e.g., consistency and priority • Priming of outcome + outcome will produce experience of agency

12. Aarts & van den BosStudy 1 • Report location of clock hand • 4 trial types 2(Judgment: key press vs. tone) x 2(Agency: agency vs. single event) • Agency trials—press a key hear tone 250 ms later, judge onset of key press or judge onset of tone • Single event-press key, no tone then judge onset of key press or tone occurred randomly and judged onset of tone • Error: perceived vs. actual time of event • Belief in free will scale is administered

13. Aarts & van den BosStudy 1 • People who had weak free will beliefs.... • No differences in error rates by free will beliefs in the in the single event condition.

14. Aarts & van den Bos • Study 2 in short • Prime location of a tile (or not) • The final position of the tile could be caused by person or computer • Those in the prime condition and who had strong free will beliefs experienced greater self agency