Chris Frith published an article entitled, “The Psychology of Volition,” in Exp Brain Res, 2013, Vol. 229: 289-299. I am posting several excerpts from that article that describe human volition, or free will. Materialists reduce the mind to the physical brain and go so far as to challenge the existence of free will. By reading these posts I hope you can come to your own conclusion about the reality of human volition.
“From the first-person view, our experience of volitional behavior 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. . . . In what sense do we control our behavior? 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 behavior? Is this truly free behavior uniquely human? . . . The key feature of a voluntary act as opposed to a reflex is that the voluntary act cannot be fully predicted from the preceding context. The implication is that, if the behavior is not being determined by external events, then the choices must be made ‘from inside’, endogenously. . . . [Frith asks] Is it possible for a nervous system to generate truly random behavior? . . . Unpredictable behavior . . . is self-generated, or endogenous. . . . Whatever the precise mechanisms underlying its perception, volition, seen from the first-person perspective, is associated with a vivid experience of agency. As agents, we have the experience of desiring an outcome and of choosing the action that will achieve it. Some believe that it is this experience of being an agent that leads to a belief in free will. . . . It is the first-person aspect of volition that is uniquely human. . . . The experience of agency requires that these signals be interpreted.” In my books and blogs I have made the effort to identify what does the interpretation, and it is the immaterial mind.