Online research in philosophy

Studies of neuropsychological patients are relevant to models of how long-term memories are stored. If amnesia is considered a binding deficit and not a difficulty in transferring information from short-term to long-term memory, it is unclear why context-free semantic learning is impaired. Also the model should account for the reverse temporal gradient seen in patients with semantic dementia.

Wegner's conclusion that conscious will is an illusion follows from a key omission in his analysis. Although he describes conscious will as an experience, akin to one of the senses, he omits its objective correlate. The degree to which behavior can be influenced by its consequences (voluntariness) provides an objective correlate for conscious will. With conscious will anchored to voluntariness, the illusion disappears.

Daniel Wegner argues that our feelings of conscious will are illusory: these feelings are not causally involved in the production of action, which is rather governed by unconscious neural processes. I argue that Wegner's interpretation of neuroscientific results rests on two fallacious causal assumptions, neither of which are supported by the evidence. Each assumption involves a Cartesian disembodiment of conscious will, and it is this disembodiment that results in the appearance of causal inefficacy, rather than any interesting features of conscious will. Wegner's fallacies illustrate two take-away points to heed if making claims about the causal structure of agency.

Wegner’s analysis of the illusion of conscious will is close to my own account of how conscious experiences relate to brain processes. But our analyses differ somewhat on how conscious will is not an illusion. Wegner argues that once conscious will arises it enters causally into subsequent mental processing. I argue that while his causal story is accurate, it remains a first-person story. Conscious free will is not an illusion in the sense that this first-person story is compatible with and complementary to a third-person account of voluntary processing in the mind/brain.

Short-term performance increases that are sometimes observed after CEO successions may be evidence of self-interested behavior. New CEOs may cut allocations to long-term investment areas such as research and development (R&D), capital equipment and pension funds in an effort to drive up short-term profits and secure their positions. However, such actions have unfavorable consequences for some stakeholders. This study provides evidence that both R&D and pension funding are reduced subsequent to a succession, even after accounting for industry trends. The expected short-term profitability increases are also observed.A major implication of these results is that boards of directors and other interested parties should carefully monitor the actions of new CEOs with regard to their treatment of R&D and pension funding if they would like to prevent such actions from occurring. This study also highlights the need to investigate other potential self-interested behaviors of new CEOs.

This commentary argues that the “illusion” to which Wegner refers in The Illusion of Conscious Will is actually the illusion that our conscious experience of mentally causing certain behaviors explains the behavior in question: It is not the subjective experience itself that is illusory, but the implied causal explanation. The experience of “mental effort” is cited as another example of this sort of illusion. Another significant example is the experience that properties of the representation of our mental images are responsible for certain patterns of behavior observed in mental imagery experiments. Examples include the increase in reaction time found when details are reported from smaller images or when attention is switched between different places and features (imagined as further apart than they are) within a single image. These examples illustrate the nature of the “illusion” involved: It is the illusion that certain observed regularities occur because of the content of the experience, as opposed to the converse – that experience has the content it does because of what the person figures out would happen in the imagined situation.

One cannot prove the truth of theological statement, but perhaps one can justify believing them because of the good consequences of doing so. It is irrational to believe statements of which there are good reasons to think false, but those of which there is some, albeit inconclusive, evidence can be believed for pragmatic reasons. However, in the interest of simplicity, it must not be possible to achieve those good consequences without such faith. John Bishop and others have argued that one need only assume theological statements to be true to enjoy the good consequences of a religious life, but in fact, faith is needed for most of these consequences to be achieved.

In The illusion of conscious will , Daniel Wegner offers an exciting, informative, and potentially threatening treatise on the psychology of action. I offer several interpretations of the thesis that conscious will is an illusion. The one Wegner seems to suggest is "modular epiphenomenalism": conscious experience of will is produced by a brain system distinct from the system that produces action; it interprets our behavior but does not, as it seems to us, cause it. I argue that the evidence Wegner presents to support this theory, though fascinating, is inconclusive and, in any case, he has not shown that conscious will does not play a crucial causal role in planning, forming intentions, etc. This theory's potential blow to our self-conception turns out to be a glancing one.

The view that short-term memory should be conceived of as being a process based on the activation of long-term memory is inconsistent with neuropsychological evidence. Data from brain-damaged patients, showing specific patterns of impairment, are compatible with a vision of memory as a multiple-component system, whose different aspects, in neurologically unimpaired subjects, show a high degree of interaction.

The concept of patience describes a person's ability to make prolonged efforts towards future goals, and his or her ability to consider long-term future consequences. Clearly, patience is a capacity that comes by degrees. On the following pages, a person will be said to be patient to the extent that his actions are motivated by future consequences. Hence, a person is not patient if he has the ability to see long-term consequences, while being unable to take these consequences into consideration when he decides how to act.