Introspection and the phenomenology of free will: Problems and prospects

Journal of Consciousness Studies 18 (1):180-205 (2011)
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Abstract

Inspired and informed by the work of Russ Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel in their 'Describing Inner Experience', we do two things in this commentary. First, we discuss the degree of reliability that introspective methods might be expected to deliver across a range of types of experience. Second, we explore the phenomenology of agency as it bears on the topic of free will. We pose a number of poten-tial problems for attempts to use introspective methods to answer var-ious questions about the phenomenology of free-will experience -- questions such as this: does such experience have metaphysical-liber-tarian satisfaction conditions? We then discuss the prospects for over-coming some of these problems via approaches such as Hurlburt's DES methodology, the so-called 'talk aloud' protocol, and forms of abduction that combine introspection with non-introspection-based forms of evidence

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Author Profiles

Terry Horgan
University of Arizona
Mark Timmons
University of Arizona

Citations of this work

Just Do It: Schopenhauer and Peirce on the Immediacy of Agency.Marc Champagne - 2014 - Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 18 (2):209-232.
Experience, Metaphysics, and Cognitive Science.L. A. Paul - 2016 - In Wesley Buckwalter & Justin Sytsma (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 419-433.
On a Neglected Aspect of Agentive Experience.Andrew Sims - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (4):1313-1330.

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