What is there to explain about free will? An “easy problem” of consciousness downstream of agency

Abstract

Abstract

Free will is one of the most enduring problems in philosophy and cognitive science, yet what, exactly, requires explanation remains unclear. The most tractable target is the experience of free will – the vivid sense of self-authorship, control, and a felt capacity to have done otherwise. As with the scientific study of mystical experiences, this phenomenology can be investigated without resolving the metaphysical claims implied by its content. Here, I argue that free will is an “easy problem” of consciousness: a phenomenon that can be measured, manipulated, predicted, and mechanistically explained. Taking causal determinism as a working postulate, I consider whether prediction and reinforcement could generate the experience of controlling one’s own actions through causal misattribution and superstitious conditioning, without granting consciousness independent causal power. If the experience can be explained under deterministic constraints, the core scientific explanandum of the free will phenomenon has been addressed. Free will can then be distinguished from agency, which remains a causally consequential, graded capacity for goal-directed, adaptive, and self-regulating action across living systems, machines, and hybrids thereof.