Abstract
Volition can be studied from two perspectives. From the third-person view, volitional behaviour is internally generated, rather than being determined by the immediate environmental context, and is therefore, to some extent, unpredictable. Such behaviour is not unique to humans, since it is seen in many other species including invertebrates. From the first-person view, our experience of volitional behaviour includes a vivid sense of agency. We feel that, through our intentions, we can cause things to happen and we can choose between different actions. Our experience of agency is not direct. It depends on sub-personal inferences derived from prior expectations and sensations associated with movement. As a result, our experiences and intuitions about volition can be unreliable and uncertain. Nevertheless, our experience of agency is not a mere epiphenomenon. Anticipation of the regret we might feel after making the wrong choice can alter behaviour. Furthermore, the strong sense of responsibility, associated with agency, has a critical role in creating social cohesion and group benefits. We can only study the experience of agency in humans who can describe their experiences. The discussion of the experience of volition, that introspection and communication make possible, can change our experience of volitional actions. As a result, agency, regret and responsibility are cultural phenomena that are unique to humans.
Highlights
When we consider the movements that people make, there is a fundamental distinction between reflexes and voluntary acts
In what sense do we control our behaviour? Does such control imply the possibility of mental causation and the existence of free will? Is free will compatible with a materialist approach to the study of behaviour? Is this truly free behaviour uniquely human?
Exploratory behaviour in humans would be another example of the highly flexible volitional behaviour associated with the evolution of the prefrontal cortex
Summary
When we consider the movements that people make, there is a fundamental distinction between reflexes and voluntary acts. Reflex movements occur completely outwith our control. A voluntary act involves a movement that we can choose to make (or not), deliberately and by thought alone. We can choose to blink, but we cannot stop a blink occurring as a reflexive response to a puff of air to the eye. Defining voluntary acts as behaviour over which we have control leads to many deep philosophical problems. If we want to study animals or humans who cannot communicate, we have to define voluntary actions on the basis of behaviour (the third-person perspective). Through introspection, we can define voluntary actions in terms of experience (the first-person perspective). The implication is that, if the behaviour is not being determined by external events, the choices must be made ‘from inside’, endogenously
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