#conscious will

The four basic conditions of human action— the combinations that arise when we emphasize the distinction between action and the sense of acting willfully. 

The experience of conscious will occurs only when conscious thoughts are seen as causing perceived actions. If unconscious thoughts cause actions, will is not experienced; and if actions are unperceived, will is not experienced either.

Penfield’s (1975) photo of the exposed conscious brain of patient M. The numbers were added by Penfield to indicate points of stimulation, and do not indicate the discovery of the math area of the brain. 

The experience of conscious will arises when a person infers an apparent causal path from thought to action. The actual causal paths are not present in the person’s consciousness. The thought is caused by unconscious mental events, and the action is caused by unconscious mental events, and these unconscious mental events may also be linked to each other directly or through yet other mental or brain processes. The will is experienced as a result of what is apparent, though, not what is real.