Free will without consciousness?
Open accessAbstract
Findings demonstrating decision-related neural activity preceding volitional actions have dominated the discussion about how science can inform the free will debate. These discussions have largely ignored studies suggesting that decisions might be influenced or biased by various unconscious processes. If these effects are indeed real, do they render subjects' decisions less free or even unfree? Here, we argue that, while unconscious influences on decision-making do not threaten the existence of free will in general, they provide important information about limitations on freedom in specific circumstances. We demonstrate that aspects of this long-lasting controversy are empirically testable and provide insight into their bearing on degrees of freedom, laying the groundwork for future scientific-philosophical approaches.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The idea that the skull marks a meaningful divide behind which a sacrosanct conscious agent orchestrates behaviour is extremely difficult to maintain in the face of philosophical, theoretical, and empirical objections.
“In the case of free will, the idea that the skull marks a meaningful divide behind which some sacrosanct conscious agent orchestrates behaviour is extremely difficult to maintain in the face of philosophical, theoretical, and empirical objections [64,76–78].”
From Ethical considerations for the use of brain–computer interfaces for cognitive enhancement (2024) · cites this paper as [77]
The introduction discusses neural activity preceding conscious decisions and unconscious influences on decision-making, supporting a challenge to the idea that a conscious agent alone directs behavior. But the paper does not address the skull as a meaningful boundary, and its Concluding remarks say these findings do not threaten free will in general. The claim’s sweeping formulation goes beyond what this source supports. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 116 · Cited by 54
Research works printed but not linked: 37
- O'Connor, T. and Franklin, C. (2021) Free will. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Zalta, E., ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab 2.
- Frede, M. (2011) A Free Will: Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought, University of California Press
- Dihle, A. (2020) The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, University of California Press
- Soon, C.S. et al. (2013) Predicting free choices for abstract intentions. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 6217-6222
- Schurger, A. et al. (2012) An accumulator model for spontane- ous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, E2904-E2913
- Doris, J.M. (2002) Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, Cambridge University Press
- Vargas, M. (2013) Situationism and moral responsibility. In Decomposing the Will (Clark, A. et al., eds), pp. 325-350, Oxford University Press
- Nahmias, E. (2014) Is free will an illusion? Confronting chal- lenges from the modern mind sciences. In Moral Psychology (Sinnott-Armstrong, W., ed.), pp. 1-26, MIT Press
- Nahmias, E. (2007) In Autonomous agency and social psychology. In Cartographies of the Mind (Maraffa, M. et al., eds), pp. 169-185, Springer
- Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (2013) Choices, values, and frames. In Handbook of the Fundamentals of Financial Decision Making: Part I (MacLean, L.C. and Ziemba, W.T., eds), pp. 269-278, World Scientific
- Hamilton, D.L. and Sherman, J.W. (2014) Stereotypes, Psychology Press 36. Doerner, J.K. and Demuth, S. (2014) Gender and sentencing in the federal courts: are women treated more leniently? Crim. Justice Policy Rev. 25, 242-269
- Mitchell, T.L. et al. (2005) Racial bias in mock juror decision- making: a meta-analytic review of defendant treatment. Law Hum. Behav. 29, 621-637
- Danziger, S. et al. (2011) Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 6889-6892
- Weinshall-Margel, K. and Shapard, J. (2011) Overlooked factors in the analysis of parole decisions. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, E833
- Hassin, R.R. et al. (2007) Subliminal exposure to national flags affects political thought and behavior. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
- Maoz, U. and Sinnott-Armstrong, W., eds (2021) Free Will: Philosophers and Neuroscientists in Conversation, Oxford University Press
- Pereboom, D. (2014) Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, Oxford University Press
- Mele, A.R. (2017) Aspects of Agency: Decisions, Abilities, Explanations, and Free Will, Oxford University Press
- Levy, N. (2014) Consciousness and Moral Responsibility, Oxford University Press
- Wegner, D.M. (2002) The Illusion of Conscious Will, MIT Press
- Roskies, A.L. (2010) Freedom, neural mechanism, and conscious- ness. In Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work (Baumeister, R.F. et al., eds), pp. 153-171, Oxford University Press
- Fischer, J.M. and Ravizza, M. (2000) Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility, Cambridge University Press
- Vargas, M. (2013) Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility, Oxford University Press
- McKenna, M. (2013) Responsibility & globally manipulated agents. In The Philosophy of Free Will: Essential Readings from the Contemporary Debates (Russell, P. and Deery, O., eds), pp. 342-359, Oxford University Press
- Popper, K. and Bartley, I. (2012) The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism from the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery Routledge
- Kane, R. (1998) The Significance of Free Will, Oxford University Press
- Pereboom, D. (2006) Living without Free Will, Cambridge University Press
- O'Connor, T. (2002) Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will, Oxford University Press
- Dennett, D.C. (1984) Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, MIT Press
- Fischer, J.M. (2007) Compatibilism. In Four Views on Free Will (Fischer, J.M. et al., eds), pp. 44-84, Blackwell
- Wolf, S. (1990) Freedom Within Reason, Oxford University Press
- Newsome, W.T. (2009) Human Freedom "Emergence". In Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will (Murphy, N. et al., eds), pp. 53-62, Springer 101.
- O'Connor, T. (2021) Emergent properties. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Zalta, E., ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab 102.
- Robinson, W. (2019) Epiphenomenalism. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Zalta, E., ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab 104.
- Huxley, T.H. (1874) On the hypothesis that animals are automata, and its history. The Fortnightly Review 16, 555-580 105.
- Hummel, D. and Maedche, A. (2019) How effective is nudging? A quantitative review on the effect sizes and limits of empirical nudging studies. J. Behav. Exp. Econ. 80, 47-58 108.
- Newell, B.R. and Shanks, D.R. (2014) Unconscious influences on decision making: a critical review. Behav. Brain Sci. 37, 1-19 114.
- Authors
- Mudrik, L., Arie, I. G., Amir, Y., Shir, Y., Hieronymi, P., Maoz, U., O'Connor, T., Schurger, A., Vargas, M., Vierkant, T., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., & Roskies, A.
- Affiliations
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- Inserm (FR)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- Duke University (US)
- Dartmouth College (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mudrik, Liad
- ORCID
- Venue
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-07
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 555-566
- ISSN
- 1364-6613 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4223478503
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 116
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 1.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Chapman University Digital Commons (Chapman University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- John Templeton Foundation
- Fetzer Institute
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/W011654/1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Free Will and Agency
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Keywords
- free will, unconscious processes, decision-making, volitional action, degrees of freedom, free will debate
- MeSH terms
- Consciousness, Humans, Volition, Personal Autonomy
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
