• DOI:10.1080/0951508021000042049
• Corpus ID: 16949962

When consciousness matters: A critical review of Daniel Wegner's The illusion of conscious will

@article{Nahmias2002WhenCM,
  title={When consciousness matters: A critical review of Daniel Wegner's The illusion of conscious will},
  author={Eddy A. Nahmias},
  journal={Philosophical Psychology},
  year={2002},
  volume={15},
  pages={527 - 541}
}

• Eddy A. Nahmias
• Published 1 December 2002
• Psychology, Philosophy
• Philosophical Psychology

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.