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Volition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

G. N. A. Vesey
G. N. A. Vesey
Affiliation:
King's College, University of London.
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Extract

‘Let us not forget this: when “I raise my arm”;, my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from that fact that I raise my arm?’

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 36 , Issue 138 , October 1961 , pp. 352 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1961

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References

page 352 note 1 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 621.

page 352 note 2 Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 105.

page 352 note 3 For instance, Spillane, J. D., Lancet, 1942, i, p. 42,Google Scholar and Martin, J. Purdon, Lancet, 1949, i, p.51.Google Scholar

page 352 note 4 Riddoch, George, Brain, 1941, Vol. 64, p. 197.Google Scholar

page 353 note 1 Riddoch, ibid., p. 218.

page 354 note 1 Philosophical Investigations, I, 614.

page 354 note 2 Thus John Ladd, in ‘Freewill and Voluntary Action’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1951/1952, writes: ‘A person who has had a limb amputated may unsuccessfully will to move the absent limb. Still he has done something, if it only be having had the appropriate imagery and discharging nervous energy into the formerly appropriate nerves.’

page 354 note 3 See James, William, Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2, p. 493.Google Scholar

page 354 note 4 If this sort of willing were to have effect it would constitute a case of what paranormal psychologists call ‘psycho-kinesis’. It has been maintained by Professor J. C. Eccles, in Nature, 1951, pp. 53–57, and The Neurophysiological Basis of Mind, pp. 284–285, that such psycho-kinesis may well be the explanation of the effect of mind on brain in voluntary action. For a discussion of the idea that voluntary action is like willing other people to do things, see B.ÓShaughnessy, ‘The Limits of the Will’, Philosophical Review, 1956.

page 355 note 1 My formulation of the argument is based mainly on Hume, David, Enquiries, Sections 51–53, and Treatise, Appendix (Selby-Bigge edition, p. 632)Google Scholar; James, William, Principles of Psychology, II, pp. 524–526Google Scholar; Bradley, F. H., Collected Essays, I, pp. 272–283, and Mind, N.S. 11, 1902, p. 441, and Mind, N.S. 13, 1904, p.1Google Scholar; and Hicks, G. Dawes, Proc. Arist. Soc., 1912–13, ‘The nature of willing’(containing a translation of a passage from Hermann Lotze, Medicinischc Psychologic, p. 288).Google Scholar

page 356 note 1 Lotze, Medicinische Psychologie, p. 288, as translated by Dawes Hicks. The Humean equivalent to the illusion that we are ‘self-acting’ would be the illusion that the immediate object of power in voluntary movement is the limb which is moved.

page 357 note 1 Guilford, J. P., General Psychology, pp. 265–269.Google Scholar

page 357 note 2 Ibid.

page 357 note 3 Collected Essays, I, pp. 275–6.

page 357 note 4 Outline of Psychology, pp. 290–1.

page 358 note 1 ‘Voluntary Control of Movement’, in Boring, Langfeld, and Weld, Foundations of Psychology, p. 50.

page 358 note 2 For a revival of this theory see Professor Campbell, C. A., ‘Self-activity and its modes’, in Contemporary British Philosophy, Third Series, p. 93. Campbell holds that if a person has somehow forgotten what are the specific sensations associated with moving his leg, he cannot will to move it. His ground for this belief is his conviction, based on introspection, ‘that the immediate object of our willing is not the movement of our leg but certain kinaesthetic and other sensations upon which, we have learned from experience, the movement of our leg normally supervenes’.Google Scholar

page 361 note 1 Smythies, J. R., ‘The Extension of Mind’, J. Soc. Psych. Res., 1951, pp. 477–502.Google Scholar

page 362 note 1 Butler, J. A. V., ‘Pictures in the Mind’, Science News 22.Google Scholar

page 363 note 1 Ibid., p. 40.

page 364 note 1 Campbell, ibid., pp. 85–6.

page 364 note 2 For example, Eccles, J. C., The Neurophysiologiccd Basis of Mind, p. 272: ‘The principal grounds for the theoretical belief that voluntary control of actions is an illusion are derived from the assumptions that science gives a deterministic explanation of all natural phenomena and that we are entirely within this deterministic scheme. In this context reference may be made to the recent discussion by Popper (Brit. Joum. Phil. Sci., 1950, pp. 117–33, 173–95), in which he concludes that not only quantum physics but even “classical mechanics is not deterministic, but must admit the existence of unpredictable events”. There are thus no sound scientific grounds for denying the freedom of the will, which virtually must be assumed if we are to actas scientific investigators.’Google Scholar