Free Will as a Social Institution
Free Will as a Social Institution
This chapter examines consciousness as a social institution rather than a naturally given mental capacity. More specifically, it views consciousness as a matter of social construction and not as brute fact of nature. In this sense, consciousness is causally efficacious for the control of behavior, regardless of what the neuroscience suggests. The chapter considers whether consciousness causes behavior in the context of voluntary action, volition, and free will. It also discusses moral evaluation of action, how the concept of free will lines up with maxims of scientific psychology, the distinction between perception and reality, causal closure and determinism, indeterminism and waiving explanation, and action-decisions. The chapter concludes with broad perspectives on conscious experience and consciousness.
Keywords: consciousness, social institution, behavior, voluntary action, volition, free will, perception, reality, determinism, indeterminism
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.